Mad North by Northwest
by Illusionna
Summary: With the Triwizard Tournment looming in the background, a set of twins are Sorted into different Houses. Can their love for each other break through the walls erected between Gryffindor and Slytherin? Or will they be lost to each other forever? The first
1. Default Chapter

--"I am but mad north by northwest--when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

--William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

****

Chapter 1

__

McGonagall waited for the first years to be brought in by Hagrid. She supposed that they were debarking now, their little faces frozen with worry and soaked from the rain the crashed down. She wasn't worried, no worry wasn't the right word at all. 

She was uncomfortable. 

Something about this Sorting made her uncomfortable. It shouldn't, it was going to be like any other. Hearing footsteps and voices coming nearer, she adjusted her spectacles on her nose, and cleared her throat. How many times had she stood here and explained to the frightened little things what was about to happen to them? How many times had Dumbledore met with her before the term started? 

As the other teachers had left the meeting room in which they all reacquainted themselves after the summer holiday, Dumbledore had caught her gaze. "Minerva, if you would stay a moment, I have something to speak with you about."

She had clasped her hands in front of her, and nodded.

"You remember Eleanor Stands?" he asked.

McGonagall drew her eyebrows together. "Eleanor Stands?" she repeated, "Patrick Stands' sister?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Her children will be attending this year."

"I didn't realize she had any children," McGonagall confessed.

"She has three," he told her, "and Patrick's youngest will be coming this year, also," he added with a smile.

"All are going to be in first year?" her uterus ached dully at the thought of triplets.

"No," Dumbledore gave her a small smile, turned from her and walked toward the teapot. "The youngest will be. The two older children are in their fourth year."

"Twins?" she asked.

Dumbledore nodded again. "But that is not what I wanted to speak to you about." He poured himself a cup of tea, the dark liquid splashed a little on the table, but the Headmaster didn't seem to notice. "They are attending Hogwarts under," he paused a moment, "unusual circumstances." He turned to McGonagall, holding his teacup with both hands. "Patrick has taken them in, last week, I believe."

"Eleanor and her children?" McGonagall shook her head in a confused way.

"No," he looked her in the eye with his piercing blue gaze, his face grave. The bags under his eyes seemed to deepen, and his mouth drooped. "Only the children."

Her mouth made an 'O'. "I see," she said softly. "Do foresee any parental…problems?"

"No," he said again, "but their previous school has been gracious enough to forward their records to us." He took a sip of his tea. "The youngest one seems to be doing fine. He has occasional outbursts, as boys do, and apparently talks too much."

"Talks too much?" she chuckled.

Dumbledore nodded, but didn't smile at her laugh. "The older two…" He took another sip of his tea. "The boy, or so say his former teachers, is 'emotionally vacant'. And the girl," he sighed, "has a tendency to be defiant and at times, violent."

"Emotionally vacant?" She shrugged her shoulders, "what, precisely, does that mean?"

"I'm not sure," Dumbledore turned back toward the table. He placed his teacup down on the polished, mahogany surface. "His records do not elaborate."

"Albus," she tried hard to keep her voice from sounding exasperated. "We don't need any more problem students than we already have. Especially violent ones." She had long since learned not to argue once the Headmaster made a decision, but that didn't mean she couldn't voice her objections. "And since they are coming, shouldn't we tell Filius?"

"Why?" he asked.

"Because," McGonagall held up her hand and began ticking off names with her fingers, "Patrick was in Ravenclaw, Eleanor was in Ravenclaw, Hugh was in Ravenclaw, Caroline was in Ravenclaw, Phillip is in Ravenclaw," she kept her hand up for emphasis. "And if one of them is violent--"

The old wizard held up his hand in a gesture of patience and turned around. "So say their former teachers," he repeated. "I simply wanted to let you know…" his voice trailed off, and his eyes moved to the side, as if he were thinking. "It is imperative you are aware of the parental circumstances."

McGonagall was silent for a moment. "I take it Eleanor is not allowed on school grounds?"

"No," Dumbledore said.

The sound of the new arrivals entering the Hall brought McGonagall back to the present. They clambered in on unsteady feet, crushed together with mutual fear. They were all soaked to the skin from the rain. She shook her head, _At least Peeves didn't pelt _them_ with water balloons. _"Welcome to Hogwarts," she announced. "I am Professor McGonagall."

As usual, the children said nothing.

"I'll be leading you into the Great Hall for the start of term banquet, but before you sit down, you'll be sorted into your Houses." She went on into her speech, she had it more than memorized, well enough to repeat it in her sleep. As she explained the four Houses, her eyes sought out the two children she'd been uncomfortable with for the past few days. They were easy to spot, considering they were a good two to three heads taller than everyone else in the crowd. Their long brown hair dripped, and separated into strings. The brims on their pointed hats blocked any detailed view of their faces. They stood touching shoulders, and she noticed that they were holding hands. She couldn't tell which one was which, they looked so much alike. They could have been identical. Which was the vacant one? Which was the violent one? 

And what on Earth had Eleanor done that her children were no longer in her charge?

They had Eleanor's hair; soft, honey brown and stringy. Her build too, lithe and thin, almost willowy. But they were already taller than Eleanor was when she left Hogwarts, from what McGonagall could remember. She had taught Eleanor so long ago…had it already been 25 years?

She led the students through the Great Hall, and set up the three legged stool and Sorting Hat. _No use worrying about it now, is there?_ Her voice in her head was more derisive than usual. _Time to get to the Sorting._

The Hat sang its song, and McGonagall unrolled her scroll. "When I call out your name," she said, "you will put on the Hhat and sit on the stool. When the Hat announces your House, you will go and sit at the appropriate table.

"Ackerly, Stewart!"

She called through the names, the hat announcing each where the student would go.

"Quirke, Orla!" 

"RAVENCLAW!" the hat bellowed.

"Stands, Jolie!"

The hat sat on her head for only a moment before announcing, "RAVENCLAW!" The Ravenclaw table cheered as the girl ran and sat next the Seventh Year McGonagall knew as her brother Phillip Stands.

"Stands-Rike, Galahad!"

The First Year came up, his eyes the size of saucers, and sat down on the stool. _Must be the one who talks too much,_ McGonagall thought. _What a stupid thing to put in a child's school records. _Again, in only a moment, the hat cried, "RAVENCLAW!" and he ran to join his cousins at the table.

"Stands-Rike, Isolte!"

It was one of the twins. She slowly made her way to the stool, her steps were measured and light as if she would slip and fall on the stone floor. She sat upon the stool gingerly, and wiggled a bit, as if trying to make herself comfortable. Her eyes, too, were round with fear, and McGonagall thought she must have felt silly, being years older than the First Years, with the Sorting Hat on her head. Transfer students were not entirely uncommon to Hogwarts, but they always looked out of place in Sorting Ceremony. There wasn't anything remarkable about the girl, McGonagall noticed, save you couldn't tell she was a girl by looking at her. 

Unlike the other two, her brother and cousin, the Hat seemed to be taking a little while to decide which house she belonged in. After a few moments of silence, the hat shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!"

The Ravenclaw table booed good naturedly, as the girl took the Hat off and placed it back on the stool. She walked toward the table, but stopped before reaching it, looking back as if waiting for something.

"Stands-Rike, Tristan!"

The other one then took the stool. Even up close, they had looked exactly like each other. The hat was only on his head a moment, before crying, "SLYTHERIN!"

Isolte looked as if she could have been knocked down by a feather. Her mouth dropped open, and when Tristan came close to her, she held out her hand imploringly. Unsmiling, he took it for a moment, and then let it go, before going over to the Slytherin table and sitting down. Isolte, still with a look of shock on her face, went and did the same at the Gryffindor table. 

McGonagall went through the rest of the names, ending with "Whitby, Kevin!" who was promptly put into Hufflepuff House.

Professor Dumbledore rose to his feet. He was smiling around at the students, his arms opened wide in welcome. "I have only two words to say to you," he told them, his deep voice echoing around the Hall. "_Tuck in."_

As usual, the Hall erupted with noise as the students did just that.

Draco stretched his head over his plate, to get a better look at Tristan. The boy was seated only a few places down from him, looking at the food that had appeared with an apathetic look. "Stands is it?" Draco asked him, physically moving the boy next to him backward so he could get a better look.

Tristan turned to him and shook his head. "Stands-Rike," he corrected, his voice neutral 

Now that he had an unobstructed view, Draco could see that Tristan's eyes were a muddy green, much like the ocean on a day when the wind has churned the water. His honey colored hair fell in loose waves down to the middle of his back, dripping with water. His skin was an ivory porcelain marred only by the streak of red across his cheeks and nose. His lips were full and pouty, a dark pink pucker on his pretty face. And that is precisely how Draco would have described him: pretty, like a girl.

"Stands-Rike," Draco repeated. "What year are you?"

Tristan blinked, and raised both eyebrows, as if it should be obvious. "Fourth year," he said. Draco couldn't quite place his accent, it sounded almost Australian. 

"What are you doing _here_?" Draco asked, raising his own platinum eyebrows and tilting his head back slightly.

"I moved," Tristan said. "And this is where my cousins have all gone to school." He shrugged, "So this is where my brother and sister and I are going." He reached over and took his glass of pumpkin juice.

"The girl in Gryffindor?" Draco said, his voice pinched.

Tristan took a sip, and glanced at the boy sitting next to Draco. He was still leaned back so the two of them could talk, and trying to reach over the distance to the food on his plate. "Yes," Tristan said, his voice and face still unemotional. He smiled then, but there was no pleasure in it. It might have been painted on. "What's your name?"

"Malfoy," he said. He wasn't sure what to make of this Stands-Rike boy. The smile on his face almost made his shiver. It reminded him of…he wasn't quite sure. _It'll come to me,_ he consoled. "Draco Malfoy," he said, turning toward Crabbe sitting on his other side, and stopping any further conversation.


	2. Mad North by Northwest Chapter 2

--"I am but mad north by northwest--when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

--William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

****

Chapter 2

Isolte didn't dream that night. The sun hadn't risen yet, but she couldn't go back to sleep. Anytime now, and she would have to get up, open the curtains on the bed, and then go about her business as if she knew what was going on. All she could do was try to keep still, hoping not to wake anyone.

Yesterday, Isolte hadn't looked at the water as the boat glided across the lake. In the distance she could see the castle and its reflection in the lake wobbled as the rain hit the water. She'd closed her eyes, afraid that the reeling picture of the castle would turn into something more discernable. She had smiled reassuringly at Galahad, though she had nothing to be sure about. She hadn't known where they were going, or what they were doing, and how they were going to do it. Phillip had been hard in not discussing the sorting ceremony to Jolie, Galahad, Tristan or herself. What if it was different than magic back home? _Well of course it's different you dolt,_ she told herself, _they learn only magic here._ When it was first decided she and her two brothers would be going away to Hogwarts, she wondered, W_hat does one do if they can't read or write_? _Or if they don't have all of their maths finished or something? After all, if you're only learning magic, doesn't that assume that you've learned everything else?_ She didn't ask though. She felt stupid enough as it was, without adding to it by asking idiotic questions.

The rain soaked them through, and a little boy fell into the lake on their way to the castle. But they made it there unscathed. When small army of students arrived on the opposite side of the lake, the large man in the front boat got out and addressed them.

She could barely understand what the giant of a man leading them was saying. _And I thought I was good at accents!_ Tristan seemed to know what he was doing, so she had slipped her hand in his and followed him.

They were led to the Great Hall, where a woman introduced herself as Professor McGonagall, and then proceeded to explain about the four Houses they were about to be Sorted into. Phillip had told them that much, at least. That and there were ghosts. She hadn't seen any yet, and wondered if they snuck up on you and frightened you when you weren't expecting it? Phillip had talked about them as if the were people, and he had obviously had a conversation with one called The Grey Lady, because he recounted pieces of it to them. What did ghosts look like, she wondered. She didn't have to wait long, as soon as they entered the Entrance Hall she saw several. They were silver and shimmery, see-through renditions of people. _That's not that bad,_ she told herself, _they look like normal people._ Or at least the ones she could see did.

She had waited her turn before going up to the stool to wear that old, worn-out hat. Of course it would say 'Ravenclaw', just as it had done with her cousin and younger brother. But she was surprised when it asked her, "So, another one, eh?"

Maybe she had imagined it.

"Where to put you…" she heard the hat voice say. It was quiet, as if it were having a private conversation with her. Could Ms. McGonagall hear it? 

"You'd do very well in Hufflepuff," the hat had said. "You're quite devoted, I can see."

Could the hat read minds?

"Of course, it makes the process of placing you so much easier. And you have a great deal on yours. Let's see, you'd not do too badly inRavenclaw, either, with a little effort."

__

I want to be happy, the thought had jumped out of Isolte's mind as if the hat had reached down and grabbed it. It was a most inappropriate thought, she mused, at a time like this.

"Oh no," the hat assured her, "not inappropriate at all. Happy, eh?" the hat was silent for a moment. "Well, in that case, it's GRYFFINDOR!"

She took off the hat, and placed it on the stool. Well, if she was in this Gryffindor house, then Tristan would be too. But she'd barely finished thinking that, when the hat had cried out, "SLYTHERIN!" Tristan took her hand when she held it out to him, and as if in a dream, he squeezed it, and went to his table, like nothing was wrong. 

Maybe to him nothing was wrong. He was never bothered by this sort of thing, by newness and aloneness. But he'd never really been alone. He'd always had her. She had always had him. And now…now she had no one.

A few of the people at the table had tried to entice her into conversation, but she didn't trust her voice. She had nodded and shook her head at their questions, managed to croak out her name, and not to cry at the table. She hadn't eaten much. She wasn't producing enough saliva to be able to eat anything and the pumpkin juice had tasted like ash. She only half listened when the Headmaster started explaining about some Tournament, and was vaguely aware that a teacher came barging in. The Hall hushed as he hobbled toward the head table on his wooden leg. After dinner, she followed the rest of the table up the moving stairs. How in the world was she going to be able to find her way around with moving stairs? In the dormitory, she had found her things at the foot of a bed. Without changing, she crawled into it, pulled the curtains, and tried to go to sleep.

She must have slept some, because she didn't remember waiting the entire night through for dawn to come. She heard some movement from one of the other beds, and wondered how one knew when to get up. _I don't have to worry about it today,_ she thought, _get up and take a shower._

But I don't know where the bathroom is.

It has to be off the Common Room, they can't expect people to wander around this old castle naked, can they?

That was the first logical thought Isolte had since this entire debacle began.

__

It's your fault you're in this debacle, she reminded herself.

She found the bathroom with very little trouble. It was comprised of several baths and several open shower stalls. She chose a shower, thanking any Unseen Power that could hear her for the room being empty, stripped and washed. She was surprised at the amount of dirt that was coming off of her. _That's right, it was raining last night._

An older girl came in as she was finishing, and smiled at her. "Good morning," she said, stripping herself down, and turning on one of the other showers.

"Good morning," Isolte muttered, wrapping herself in her dressing gown. _Guess you're going to have to get used to bathing in front of other people. _She ran back to her dorm room.

The dorm consisted of five beds, all four posters with red velvet curtains drawn around them. The other four girls were still in theirs, _Thank goodness,_ and Isolte took her clothes from her trunk, and crawled back into her bed, pulling the curtains shut. What did one do for privacy around here?

__

Draw the curtains to the bed, stupid.

But did you get dressed in your bed every day? That seemed rather inefficient.

She was worried about it, because she didn't know.

There was so much she didn't know. Did you make your bed or did someone else make it for you? How did you get your clothes washed? What if you found someone else's clothes along with yours when they were washed? What happened if you outgrew your clothes, or they shrunk in the wash? What if you were thirsty in the middle of the night, and needed to get a drink of water? _Better stock up on bottled water when you go to that village on the weekends. _Why in the world had she not thought to ask Phillip these questions on the train here? _Because you had bigger things on your mind._ What bigger things were there than going away to boarding school? _Your entire life before this._

Once fully dressed, she got out of her bed as quietly as she could, grabbed a book from her trunk, and headed down the Common Room. _Read until everyone leaves,_ she told herself, _and then just follow them._

She was surprised by the warmth of the Common Room. There was a fireplace on one wall, and lots of armchairs, the kind that sucked one into them when one sat down, and made it very difficult to get back up again. There were also several tables with wing-backed chairs. She chose one of the squashy armchairs, and opened her book _The Bond Between Witches and Their Familiars: A Historical Study._

She didn't have to wait long. As if by some internal alarm clock, waves of students started emerging from the dormitory stairs, many of them smiling at her as they passed. They exited through the portrait of the Fat Lady--_Was that really the name of the portrait?--_and once enough of them had done so, Isolte followed them.

Getting to the Great Hall, she discovered, was easy, one simply went down the stairs until one reached the bottom level. If that had not been relief enough, Tristan was waiting outside the Great Hall doors. He made eye contact with her, and she ran the rest of the distance to him.

"I see you got here alright," he said, taking her arm and leading her into the Great Hall.

She didn't get a chance to reply, Jolie and Galahad threw themselves at them, and began dragging them to the Ravenclaw table. "Come eat with us," Jolie said, "Phillip said it was alright."

"Isn't it great?" Galahad beamed as he sat down next to his cousin, "We talked to The Grey Lady this morning, didn't we Jol?" Jolie nodded her head. "That's our House Ghost," Galahad explained. "You talked to yours yet?"

"No," Isolte answered. _Nor do I any desire to._

"Apparently ours doesn't do much talking," Tristan said. "He glares occasionally, but from what I can gather, that's about all you can get out of him."

Phillip and a group of Seventh Years came to them at the table. "Hey, Phil," an older boy sat down. Phillip, his hair pulled back in a pony tail sat down next to him.. "They all don't half look like you, do they?"

Phillip laughed and sat down, "You should see their mother and my dad," he said, "they're like these two here." He pointed Tristan and Isolte with his fork. "You two are going to cause a world of upset when mum and dad find out you've bolted tradition."

Isolte looked over at Galahad, he'd winced at the mention of his mother. "Will it be bad?" he asked Phillip, "that they're not in Ravenclaw with us? Will Auntie Coleen be angry?"

Phillip laughed, and Isolte felt a surge of anger that he should be so insensitive to her brother. "No," he said finally, "she'll be surprised, but she won't be angry. And how funny is that?" He turned his attention to the twins, "One Slytherin and one Gryffindor."

"And you're in the same house as Harry Potter," Jolie giggled and grabbed Isolte by the arm. "You can tell us all what he's like."

"I imagine he's like anyone else," Isolte said quietly, reaching over to serve herself some eggs. "You'd better hurry up and eat, love," she told Jolie, "or you'll be hungry."

"You sound like mum," Jolie squinched up her nose.

"I'm supposed to," Isolte told her with mock indignation, "your mum gave me permission." 

At that, the five of them laughed.

"So where are you going first?" Tristan leaned in and spoke in her ear, as if he didn't want anyone else to hear her. 

She took out her schedule. "Herbology, but look!" she pointed to the paper, "I'm with you in the class after that: Care of Magical Creatures." She turned to him and smiled.

He didn't smile back, merely nodded, leaning over a little more to see her schedule. "And we're together tomorrow too. And Friday."

"We'll have to eat lunch and dinner together," Isolte said, her voice low, "we're not together at all Wednesday or Thursday."

Tristan nodded his head as a loud bell rang. It sounded like a church bell, slow and deep and distant. The students began getting up and walking en masse toward the doors. She looked at her twin, knowing that her eyes must have betrayed her anxiety. 

"Time for class," he said. He stood up, picking up his school books, and headed toward the door.

Finding her way to Herbology was easy too, she simply had to go outside, walk toward the greenhouses, and go in the one that had people in it. Not being sucked in by the drenched earth was another problem altogether. Her feet squelched each time she walked, her squelches blended in with the squelches of tens of other students outside on their way to classes, making a symphony of rude noises. _The First Years'll get a kick out this._

The Herbology teacher, who introduced herself as Professor Sprout, was short and plump, with hands that had obviously done a lot of work in their day. She started off by calling roll, and Isolte looked about at each of the students as she called their names. When the teacher came to hers, she smiled at her warmly and said, "Welcome to Hogwarts Miss Stands-Rike." Once she was finished the roll, she directed the students to the plants that were set up on the table. "Bubotubers," she said briskly. "They need squeezing. You will collect the pus--"

"The _what_?" said one of the Gryffindor boys, sounding revolted.

"Pus, Finnigan, pus," said Professor Sprout, "and it's extremely valuable, so don't waste it. You'll collect the pus, I say, in these bottles. Wear your dragon-hide gloves; it can do funny things to the skin when undiluted, bubotuber pus."

Islote pulled on her gloves and began squeezing the swellings on the plants. When they popped, a large amount of thick yellowish-green liquid burst forth, which smelled strongly of petrol. "Gross," she muttered, collecting it in her bottle.

"Isn't it, though?" asked a girl across from her.

Isolte nodded her head, and looked around at her classmates as she pus-collected. She noticed that they gathered together in twos and threes, forming their own little groups, talking as they worked. She noticed that Harry Potter was talking to a girl with bushy hair and a tall red-headed boy. _He looks rather…ordinary,_ she thought, popping another pustule. 

__

What were you expecting? 

I don't know. The great Harry Potter, the way everyone talks about him. I guess I figured he'd be…bigger.

She guessed that he was about her height, maybe even a little shorter. Not that she was the smallest girl in the world. But, her height was the least of her complaints about herself, if she were to list them. His hair was very messy, and his glasses kept sliding down his nose, like they were too big for him. They _were_ too big for him. He looked up, and made eye contact with her for a brief moment, She looked away, embarrassed at being caught staring, and picked another of the bubotuber's shiny swellings. She noticed, in that one second, that his eyes were bright green, as if they were made of emerald glass and a light was turned on behind them.

Professor Sprout came around and began corking the bottles of bubotuber pus. "This'll keep Madam Pomfrey happy," she said. "An excellent remedy for the more stubborn forms of acne. Should stop students resorting to desperate measures to rid themselves of pimples."

"Like poor Eloise Midgen," said a Hufflepuff girl, "she tried to curse hers off."

"Silly girl," said Professor Sprout. "But Madam Pomfrey fixed her nose back on in the end."

Isolte gasped, having a sudden vision of a black haired girl in pig tails, her nose gone, and where it should have been, only a flat, blank space. She had her mouth open in a desperate attempt to breath and tears streamed down her face. Isolte closed her eyes tight, trying to block the image out of her mind. A booming bell resounded, and with it the image of Eloise Midgen dissipated.

The Gryffindors then left the greenhouse and headed toward a little hut Isolte had seen in the distance, by the edge of the forest. _Hadn't the Headmaster said something about not going in the forest last night?_ Isolte couldn't remember. She'd have to ask Tristan.

The huge man who took them across the lake was standing outside the hut, one hand on the collar of an enormous dog. There were several open crates by his feet, and the dog was whimpering and straining at his collar. An odd rattling noise came from the open crates, followed by what sounded like minor explosions. 

"Mornin'!" the huge man said. _Was it_ _Hedric?_ Isolte tried to remember what he had said his name was from the night before, _Harrigid perhaps?_ He grinned widely at Harry Potter and the red head and girl that were with him. "Be'er wait fer the Slyterins, they won' want ter miss this--Blast-Ended Skrewts!" He seemed only to talk to those three particular students, ignoring the rest of the Gryffindors as if they were even there.

"Come again?" asked the red head.

The huge man pointed at the crates, and one of the girls squeeled. "On'y ju' hatched," said the giant of a man, "so yeh'll be able ter raise 'em yerselves! Thought we'd make a bit of a project of it!"

"And why would we _want_ to raise them?" inquired a cold voice.

Isolte turned around to see another group had joined them, the Slytherins she presumed. She smiled upon seeing Tristan emerge from the crowd and skipped over to him. "Isn't this wild?" she whispered.

Tristan shrugged.

"Who's that?" Isolte jerked her head to the boy who was wondering why he would want to raise the Skrewts. He was flanked by two very large boys on either side, as if they were some sort of bodyguard. She giggled to herself at the thought.

Tristan ignored her giggling. "His name is Malfoy," he said, "and those two beside him are Crabbe and Goyle," he raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

"That's not their names," Isolte clicked her tongue.

"It is," Tristan shook his head again, looking very much like an old man reprimanding a youngster. "Everyone here goes by their last names."

"I've noticed that," Isotle said.

"I've been Stands-Rike all morning," Tristan muttered, leading his sister over to a crate and peering inside. "What are these things called again?"

"Blast Ended-Skrewts," Isolte answered. "I've been Miss Stands-Rike. We can't both be Stands-Rike in the classes we have together." She looked around at the other students, and noticed they had begun to pick up slimy somethings from buckets beside the crates and were dropping them in. "Isn't this wild?" she asked again.

Tristan made a face, and then looked at her. "I wonder what they do?"

"Oh," she glanced down in the crate. "I dunno."

"How was Herbology?" Tristan asked, poking the Skrewt with a finger.

"Neat," Isolte smiled broadly, turning her full attention to her brother. "They've loads of greenhouses back there," she gestured to them, "and they're all full of magical plants. We popped the zits on one."

"What?" Tristan made another face.

Isolte nodded enthusiastically, "It's not just reading out of books and writing papers, we actually get to _do_ stuff here!"

"Yer not feedin' yer Skrewts!" the huge man came over to the two of them. He sounded as if he was offended, but Isolte couldn't quite tell with his big, black beard covering most of his face. 

In unison, the twins looked in the crate and then in the bucket. "What's this again, Mr. Hagrid?" Tristan asked, gesturing to the bucket.

"Ant eggs an' frog livers an' a bit o' grass snake…not sure yet what they like. Go on," he gestured to the crate. "Give i' a try."

Tristan plastered his painted on smile, and gestured to Isolte. "Ladies first."

"Gee," she reached in a grabbed what might have been a bit of grass snake or a part of a frog liver, she couldn't tell which, "thanks." Just as she dropped it in the box someone shouted--

__

"Ouch!" It was one of the Gryffindor boys. "It got me!"

"Who's that?" Tristan asked.

Hagrid hurried over to him.

"Dunno," Isolte replied.

"Weren't you paying attention during roll?" he said.

"Obviously not as closely as you," she retorted.

"Its end exploded!" the Gryffindor boy said angrily.

Isolte dropped her bit of grass snake and clutched her hand to her chest.

"Ah, yeah, that can happen when they blast off," said Hagrid nodding.

"Blast off?" several students echoed.

"Eurgh! Hagrid," said one of the Gryffindor girls, "what's that pointy thing on it?"

Tristan leaned over, his lips almost touching Isolte's ear, "You've got a House full of complainers."

"Ah, some of 'em have got stings," said Hagrid enthusiastically. "I reckon they're the males. The females've got sorta sucker things on their bellies….I think they might be ter suck blood."

"Well," said Malfoy, "I can certainly see why we're trying to keep them alive. Who wants pets that can burn, sting and bite all at once?"

Isolte rolled her eyes, "Yours are much better?" she asked her brother in a dry tone.

"Just because they're not very pretty," said the girl who was with Harry Potter and the red head, "doesn't mean they're not useful."

This time Malfoy rolled his eyes, and turned his attention back to his Skrewt. The two new students had paired up with each other, despite them being in different Houses. Didn't they know how it was done here? Of course they didn't, they were obviously from some backwater village somewhere in the Australian Outback, dancing around fires with Aborigines. The boy still nudged at him somewhere in the back of his brain, something he'd seen somewhere else. Maybe he reminded him of someone.

After the dinner last night, they had all returned to their Common Room, and Tristan hadn't lingered in it, instead going straight to the dorm. Draco had followed him, Crabbe and Goyle trailing loyally behind him. Pansy had said something, he hadn't really paid attention, and pretended he hadn't heard her. It turned out that this year the new boy's bed was next to Draco's, and Draco had noticed his trunk was devoid of much paraphernalia. "Didn't bring much," he said.

Stands-Rike looked up, his face blank. "All my stuff's at home."

"Doesn't do you any good there, does it?"

Stands-Rike shook his head. "No," he agreed. "It doesn't."

Draco blinked. He opened his mouth to say something, but it suddenly flew from his head when Stands-Rike had answered.

"You 15?" Crabbe asked, opening his own trunk, and taking out a pair of pajamas.

Stands-Rike shook his head. "No, I'll be 15 in November."

Crabbe had raised him eyebrows and frowned. "Oh."

"Where are you coming from?" Blaise Zabini asked. Draco hadn't noticed when he'd come in the dorm, he'd been too busy trying to watch Stands-Rike and get his own pajamas out of his trunk.

"Gloustershire," Tristan said.

"You don't sound like you're from Gloustershire!" Goyle said through his pajama shirt. His head popped out of the head-hole, and he said again, "You don't sound like it."

Tristan had given him that painted on smile again, and shrugged. Then he parted the curtains to his bed, taking his pajamas in with him, and closed them up again. Draco had heard the muttering of a spell, and waited a moment for something like a dandelion to sprout from one their heads. When it didn't, he took his own shirt off, and changed for the night.

After Care of Magical Creatures that morning, they went into the Great Hall for lunch. Draco saw that the twins ate at the Ravenclaw table again, with their cousins and brother. He felt someone hit his arm.

"What's so interesting about him?" Pansy barked, sitting herself down in between Goyle and Draco. "You've been staring at him all morning."

"I have not," Draco reached over and took a lamb chop. "There is something wrong with him."

"What do you mean?" Pansy turned her attention, none to delicately, to the Ravenclaw table. "Is he slow or something?"

Draco shook his head, "I don't know, I haven't been able to figure it out." He blinked, and turned to look at her. Damn, she'd caught him off guard, and he was babbling. "What do you care anyway?" he asked.

"Just wondering," she crossed her arms. "You've been awfully interested in him all morning, is all."

When the bell rang to signal the start of afternoon lessons, Draco saw the twins get up and part company at the Great Hall door. He lingered close enough so he could hear them.

"Good luck," the girl said, smiling broadly, her eyes twinkling.

"You're the one who needs luck," the boy said, walking away from her.

Isolte watched him go, and then headed up to the North Tower, following several other Gryffindors in hopes they were going the same way. She saw Harry Potter climbing up a silver ladder followed by the red head, and followed them. The smell in the room almost knocked her back down the ladder. It was laden with a heavy, sweet perfume, and it took a moment for both her nose and her eyes to adjust. The curtains were closed, and the room was bathed in a dim, red light. It was filled with chintz chairs and poufs for the students to sit on, all around little circular tables. 

"Good day," said a misty voice from behind her. 

Isolte turned, almost saying 'good day,' back, when she realized the misty voice wasn't speaking to her. It was speaking to Harry Potter.

Well, not the misty voice, but rather the person attached to it. She was a very thin woman, even thinner than Isolte herself, with enormous glasses that made her eyes appear huge. _She must be close to blind,_ Isolte thought. She wore a great array of beads and bangles, so that she glittered in the faint light and was peering down at Harry Potter with a tragic expression on her face, her eyebrows drawn together in an upside down v.

"You are preoccupied, my dear," she said mournfully to him, "my Inner Eye sees past your brave face to the troubled soul within. And I regret to say that your worries are not baseless. I see times ahead for you, alas…most difficult…" _A little melodramatic isn't she?_ Isolte bit her cheeks, "…I fear the thing you dread will indeed come to pass…and perhaps sooner than you think…" her voice dropped to almost a whisper and she swept past them to front of the room. She did not even look at Isolte as she walked by, and seated herself in a large, winged armchair before the fire.

Isolte sat down at the table in the very front of the class, two of the other Gryffindor girls were there also. They were both looking up at the teacher with adoration on their faces. They even held their hands in their laps the same way she did. Isolte's heart beat in her throat. She had waited her entire life to meet someone who could _Divine_--a real Witch who could Divine. And here she was in Diviniation class. There were teacups on shelves at the corner of the room, and a large map of the sky behind her.

"My dears," the Professor said. Isolte liked that…_my dears_, like the students were special to her, "it is time for us to consider the stars." She went on about planetary rays and human destiny for several minutes before turning her attention to Harry Potter once again. "For example, with our dear Harry," she said, "we can tell from his tragic life, and the tragedies yet to happen to him that Saturn was in a position of great influence when he was born." She paused. Harry Potter just stared into space. "My dear," she repeated in her wispy voice.

"_Harry!"_ muttered the red head.

"I was saying, my dear," said the Professor, "that you were clearly born under the influence of Saturn."

"Born under--what, sorry?" said Harry.

"Saturn, dear, the planet Saturn!" said the Professor, sounding irritated. Why was the Professor spending so much time on Harry Potter? He wasn't even paying attention to her! Every class she had been to today, the teacher had doted on him, like he was some sort of prized object, and so far he had acted only like a spoiled brat! She was going on and on about his dark hair and his tragic life, and he wasn't even pretending to pay attention. Isolte bit her lip and took a deep breath to keep from shouting out loud at him.

The Professor passed out charts to each student to have them fill in the position of the planets at their moment of birth. Isolte almost rose out of her chair with excitement as she hurriedly calculated the positions. The Professor, who Isolte heard one of the girls at her table called, "Professor Trelawney," came over to her after a while, and peered over her shoulder at her chart. "Oh my dear," she said, putting a sympathetic hand on Isolte's shoulder. "You've never taken Divination before, have you?"

Isolte swallowed before answering. "It's my favorite subject," her voice was quiet.

"I can see that your last teacher spared your feelings as best she could," Professor Trelawney said, "but I can also see that your Inner Eye is not strong." 

Isolte opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

"Don't worry my dear," Professor Trelawney patted her shoulder again, "we cannot all be strong in the Divination Arts."

Just then one of the girls at her table squealed, "Oh Professor, look! I think I've got an unaspected planet! Oooh, which one's that, Professor?"

Professor Trelawney left Isolte, floated to the other side of the table, and began to talking to the other girl. Isolte didn't hear what was being said. She kept her eyes on her chart, already completed, and heard Professor Trelawney's voice in her mind, _"I can also see that your Inner Eye is not strong…I can also see that your Inner Eye is not strong…"_ She didn't hear what else was said the entire class, and followed the other Gryffindors back to the Great Hall, where Tristan was waiting for her by the door.

When she saw him, she blinked, and two tears rolled down her face.

"What's the matter?" he asked, as if he already knew.

"Nothing," she croaked, slipping her hand in his and walking toward the Ravenclaw table.

"OH NO YOU DON'T, LADDIE!"

Isolte's breath was knocked out of her by a gravelly bellow from behind her. _He hasn't done anything wrong. He hasn't done anything wrong, _the words sped around her mind as the Entrance Hall behind her grew silent. She looked over at Tristan, his face was impassive, but the pink streak across his cheeks and nose was gone, replaced with a translucent whiteness that showed the purple veins under his skin. _I haven't done anything wrong,_ she heard his voice in her head, _I haven't done anything wrong._

In unison they turned, so see the professor with the wooden leg and large, strange eye pounding a white ferret against the floor. "Never--do--that--again--" said the professor, speaking each word as the ferret hit the stone floor and bounced upward again.

"Professor Moody!" said a shocked voice.

Professor McGonagall was coming down the marble staircase with her arms full of books.

"Hello, Professor McGonagall," said Moody calmly, bouncing the ferret still higher.

Isolte felt her stomach lurch. The acrid taste of bile filled her mouth, and she turned around quickly, grabbing Tristan's hand. A crowd and developed behind them at the doorway, and she dragged her brother through the people. She couldn't intake breath, and she held the bile in her mouth, which made her gag again. Breaking free of the crowd, she ran to the Ravenclaw table, and sank down on the bench. She grabbed a cloth napkin and spit into it. Her eyes were watering, _I can't cry here,_ the thought was wild and panicked. She wiped them, and then looked up at Tristan. His large muddy, green orbs were watching her intently. They were red rimmed and his lips shone purple against his white face. In his hand, he also held one of the blue and silver napkins.


	3. Chapter 3

--"I am but mad north by northwest--when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

--William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

Chapter 3

A small, squat man, balding and rat-faced, was staring at his arm. It was donned with a glove made of molten sliver. His breathing was ragged and his mouth hung open, his eyes wide. He wiggled the fingers, and brought his hand into a fist and opened it again. Picking up a twig next to him, he crushed it into powder.

"My Lord," he whispered, "Master... it is beautiful...thank you..._thank you..._."

He scrambled forward on his knees, and kissed the black hem of someone's robes.

"May your loyalty never waver--" the voice hissed like a teakettle coming to boil. 

Isolte bolted up in bed, her throat aching with an icy cold. It was a physical sensation, as if she had just swallowed an ice cube. She put her hand to her neck, and had trouble flexing her fingers, as if they, too, had been grasped by the chill. Dreams did not do this to her. In fact, she liked dreams, because she never felt anything in them. She was simply an observer, watching a movie in her head and wondering what would happen next. She never awoke frightened, or happy, or sad or aroused. Merely thoughtful. Tonight, however, some sort of frost had descended upon her, but when she touched her throat with her hands, it was warm. 

__

It was the voice, she thought, shivering. She had never heard anything like it. It had no face to it, no origin. Only the hem of a black robe. It twined on like a snaking river and filled her throat with the cold. _Perhaps if robes could talk, that is what they would sound like?_ she reasoned. The rationale sounded hollow. There was something about it…

__

Why would someone be so happy they had been given a glove? the question pushed out the thought of the voice. In the back of her mind, Isolte knew it was a mechanism to keep her at ease, learned from years of forced not-thinking. 

Maybe he was homeless _and one glove was better than no glove._

No, he was too fat to homeless.

Isolte bit her lip. _Who calls people "Lord" and "Master" nowadays anyway? Sounds like some sort of historical fantasy novel._

That's great, Iss, she clucked her tongue at herself as she opened the heavy curtains of her bed. _Now you're turning into some medieval freak._

__

It was a dream, she admonished, _what are you getting so worked up about it for?_

She didn't know. 

When she opened her chest at the foot of her bed, her dirty clothes from the past two days were still in the small pile where she had left them. She hadn't seen any of the other girls leave their clothes in any particular spot or take them anywhere to be cleaned. They simply appeared at breakfast wearing clean clothes. At least, she assumed they were clean clothes. They looked clean. _So how do you get you're clothes washed?_ she wondered. In four days she would run out of clean knickers. Would she have to clean them on her own in the sink? _You can do it after everyone is gone to bed,_ she told herself, _and hang them on the inside of the bed so no one will see._ She would get dripped on, but that was better than wearing dirty drawers.

She grabbed her clothes from the chest and closed the curtains. After donning her uniform and robes, she made the bed, and opened the curtains. The other girls did this, so she figured it was the right thing to do. _Maybe that's how you air out the bed._ She jammed her hand on her head, cast a breath-freshening charm on her mouth, and hopped out of the Gryffindor Tower. 

Tristan was waiting by the door to the Great Hall when she got there, leaning casually on the doorjamb with his arms across his chest. He stood up straight when he saw her, and wrapped his fingers around hers when she slipped her hand into his. "You know that ferret yesterday before dinner?"

Isolte nodded "How could I forget?"

Tristan flashed her a sidelong glance. "That was Malfoy."

"No," she stopped walking and looked at him. "That must have hurt!"

"It did," Tristan gave her a little tug to start her walking again. "He was whimpering when he came in at 10 last night. His stomach is all bruised."

Isolte winced. "What was he out after curfew for?" 

"Served a detention," Tristan said.

"Even after being pounded against the floor?" Isolte put her hand over her mouth when several of the Ravenclaw students stared at her. 

Tristan nodded, raising his eyebrows.

"Did he deserve it?" Isolte asked a little more quietly as she sat down on the bench and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot.

Tristan clicked his tongue. "Yes." He passed the sugar to his sister. "He tried to curse Harry Potter with a teacher staring right at him. Idiot."

She poured some milk into her tea, turning it a pale tan color. She took a sip and made a face. It tasted like dirty milk. Back home she had always been proud of her British heritage, and took her tea drinking seriously. However, making the perfect cup of tea was much more difficult that she had first suspected. The fact that she had never made a cuppa before hadn't crossed her mind the first time she was allowed to do so at her Uncle Patrick's house. She discovered that the variety of teas drunk by the British natives were much more pungent than her mother's home brew. She had at first puckered from the acrid taste, and then gagged when she added too much sweetener. Her Aunt Colleen had laughed that high pitched laugh of hers, and taken the cup away. "I should have known Eleanor wouldn't have let you touch her teakettle." Aunt Colleen had made her a cup of tea, and took a test sip. "Perfect," she said, placing it in front of her. Isolte had not thought it perfect. It was still sweet, but the bitterness of the tea clung to the back of her mouth and made her stomach lurch. She'd drunk the whole thing, and every one she was given after that. Even after a week of tea drinking, they still tasted bitter.

"What did he say when he came in last night?" Isolte looked toward the Slytherin table for the platinum blonde Tristan had identified as Malfoy yesterday. He wasn't there.

"Nothing, only that he served detention. And he hated McGonagall. He hated Potter and now he hates Moody." Tristan took a sip of his own tea. He didn't make any kind of face, and had seemed to have no ill effects from the strong brew. "I told him he was thoughtless."

Isolte raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. "What did he say?"

"He asked if I was threatening him. I told him that would be a poor excuse for a threat, and that he was merely thoughtless for striking when a teacher was watching and then not being willing to pay the consequences."

"What did he say then?" Isolte asked.

"He said I was right." Tristan turned away from her to Galahad and Jolie who had just sat down. "What else was he going to say?"

Isolte tried to engage her twin in conversation with her, he ignored her for his younger brother and cousin. She finished her breakfast in silence, listening half-heartedly to Jolie and Galahad go on about The Grey Lady. According to the two of them, they were all becoming quite good friends. _Next thing you know,_ Isolte thought sourly, _she'll invite them to tea. _ She took another sip of hers and felt her chest tighten with jealously. _They're you're kin,_ her voice in her head was harsh and grating. _What have you got to be jealous of?_

__

They have each other, I have no one.

You have Tristan.

Not all the time.

The bell sounded, the deep "THONG" booming through the Hall. She swigged down the rest of her tea, and her stomach lurched again._,_ _You've been drinking tea all of your life, you'll make a fool out of yourself--whoever heard of a tummy getting upset with tea? _She was surprised that the voice in her head was her mother's South England lilt. 

__

It's too strong…even in her mind her excuse sounded hollow.

__

You need to drink more of it then, so you can get used to it.

"Bye!" Isolte felt a thump on her shoulder. She turned to Tristan, who was staring at her with that empty look of his. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Bye," she said quietly.

"See you at lunch," he smiled his artificial smile. 

She nodded and took out her timesheet. "History of Magic," she read. The stairs shifted as she climbed them, and she found herself on the wrong side of the floor. She wandered around for several minutes, entering the classroom just as the teacher began lecturing.

Her jaw dropped when she saw him. 

He was see-through. She could clearly view the blackboard behind him. He shimmered, like the ghosts she had seen in the Great Hall during meal times. _He can't be a ghost,_ she blinked hard, and looked at him again.

He was still translucent, and still droning on. "Hilda the Insane," he was saying, "thoroughly convinced she could storm the castle with her army of walking mushrooms, went forth in her dressing gown and purple witch's hat." His voice was like a hypnotists, monotonous and non-expectant. His voice told Isolte that he knew Hilda the Insane, inside and out, and he was bored telling a group of students about her. There was much more about her than any of them knew, or could know, in this one, insignificant lecture. More than they could know in any length of lectures. Isolte's heart lurched with the sudden need to know about Hilda the Insane, as if the ghost-teacher had cast some sort of focusing charm on her. She sank into the seat at her right in the very back of the room, not noticing who it was she was sitting by. Dreamily taking out her parchment and quill, she didn't look up from her notes for the rest of the class.

Hilda the Insane apparently charmed a field of mushrooms in order to storm a castle in Wales. The mushrooms, she believed, would be impervious to magic. And they were. However, the citizens began throwing rocks at the mushrooms' large heads, which fell apart on impact. Hilda then changed herself into a mushroom to evade capture, only to be squished by a catapult boulder. When the bell rang to signal the end of class, Isolte had barely noticed that the time had passed at all. She gathered up her pages of notes on Hilda, and her hand brushed someone else's. 

She look to her right to one of the girl's from her dorm room. _Parvati?_ Isolte wasn't sure of her name. She was dark skinned with a long, black plait slung over her shoulder. "You took a lot of notes." Isolte took from her tone it was not a compliment.

"I like History," she said.

She stood up, and nodded. "Yes," she said, giggling, walking past her toward the door, "that's obvious." Lavender, it was easy for Isolte to remember her name, it was her favorite scent, followed the dark haired girl out of the room, giving Isolte a sideways glance as she walked by.

Isolte clicked her tongue to herself, and finished gathering her notes. The classroom was empty, save for the ghostly teacher at the head of the room, his back turned toward the unused blackboard. She glanced down at her timetable to get his name. "Goodbye Professor Binns!" she called.

The ghost turned around and blinked at her. He pushed his thick glasses onto his nose. 

_Are they really glasses, or are they simply renditions of glasses? _ran through Isolte's head.

"Goodbye Miss…" his voice trailed off. 

She smiled, the ghosts didn't seem to be too bad. "Isolte Stands-Rike."

Professor Binns nodded to her, and then turned around again and disappeared through the blackboard.

She stared for a moment, blinking hard. "Sweet as!" she exclaimed, almost skipping to The Great Hall, images of mushrooms dancing in her head.

As usual, Tristan was waiting for her. He took a few steps forward and gave a small, imperceptible smile. She beamed at him in return, stopping when she got to him. "Did you know," she said, "that one of our teachers is a ghost?"

He slipped his hand in hers and shook his head. "No, I didn't." He led her to the Ravenclaw table where Galahad and Jolie had saved them seats. Phillip was at the other end of the table, obviously feeling that his role as caretaker was duly completed. Now he could get on with his own life.

She told him about Professor Binns. Galahad was more than happy to join them in the conversation; he and Jolie had had History of Magic the day before. Once Galahad got started, no one else got a word in edgewise until lunch was over. Tristan and Isolte had to pry him away so they could go. "Whatcha got now?" he asked, Jolie trying to pull him up the marble staircase.

"Potions," Isolte said, not turning around as Tristan and she headed toward the stair to the dungeons.

They took their seats at an empty desk in the middle of the Potions classroom, the clinking and thumping of cauldrons being set up echoing against the walls. 

"It's bloody cold down here," Isolte said rubbing her hands together.

"They say it gets worse in the winter," Tristan raised his eyebrows plaintively.

Isolte shivered. "It isn't winter yet?" she muttered.

Professor Snape stood up behind his desk. His hair was black and shiny, too shiny really. It fell to his shoulders in greasy strings. Isolte put her hand her own stringy hair, is that what hers looked like? _Mine isn't greasy,_ she assured herself. His nose was large and hooked at the end, partially obscuring the deep scowl on his thin lips. His skin had a yellow tinge to it, and reminded Isolte of the people she had seen her mother treat for jaundice. He swept his dark eyes about the room without moving his head. They were like onyx, moonless-night black with no light shining from them at all. His eyes were almost almond shaped, but not quite, they rounded too much in the middles. His gaze lingered on Tristan and Isolte for a moment before brushing away to survey other parts of the room.

Isolte bit her lip. In that brief instant of observation, she had felt something from him.

__

Fear.

No, not fear. She was an expert on fear and this wasn't it. It was colder, less metallic than fear, like the difference in feel between copper and quartz. She couldn't place it, and it nibbled at the back of her brain.

She didn't have time to dwell on it, though, because he got right down to business and began reciting ingredients from the potion they were making. She scrambled for her quill and began writing. "He doesn't waste any time, does he?"

Tristan clicked his tongue. "I don't think he wastes anything."

When the Professor spoke the words, they all flowed together, like the feel of satin on hot skin. His voice was middle timbre, and as she was looking at her paper and not his face, she could admit that his voice was quite mesmerizing. It reminded her of someone chanting, a gentle up and down cadence that never veered too far from the flatline but far enough that it was pleasant to listen to. "You will be making The Knitting Potion. No, it doesn't knit yarn," there were several snickers from the Slytherin side of the room, "it knits skin together that's been cut. Like those made with a very--sharp--knife." He emphasized the words, and smiled at Harry Potter, showing yellow, uneven teeth. "It works exceptionally well on jagged wounds if used correctly," he raised his ebony eyebrows and smiled at one of the Gryffindors, "we will be sure to test it when it's done." The boy under his gaze shivered.

They're ingredients were already set out in front of them, and Professor Snape instructed them to started their little flames beneath their cauldrons.

"Incendio," Tristan touched his wand tip first to his own cauldron bottom and then to his sister's.

"Ah," she said disappointed. "You should've let me do my own. God knows we need a bigger fire in here."

Tristan's eyes moved to look at her, his head still facing his ingredients. "That'd make you popular," he said, "burn down the dungeon on your first visit down here."

"I wouldn't burn it down," she assured him, "only given it a good scorching."

"The temperature needs to be between 92 and 93 degrees before adding the calendula petals," Professor Snape's voice rose above the chatter of the students. "Each of you has a thermometer at your seat. It is imperative that you _use_ the therometer," he drug out his words and gave the entire room a sweeping look. He glared at a dark-haired Gryffindor boy. The boy hurriedly looked away.

"Who's that?" Tristan whispered, handing her a thermometer.

Her brows knitted in concentration. She shook her head, "I don't know." She glanced down at the thermometer in her hand. "What's this for?"

"To get you to tell me when my potion is between 92 and 93," he replied. His own cauldron was thermometer-less.

She put the thermometer on the desk and placed her hand over his cauldron. "Not yet," she assured him.

"Can't you follow directions?" 

Isolte looked behind her, to see Malfoy smiling derisively at her. "Or have you no thermometers in the Outback?"

Isolte returned his sneer, and cocked her hip to the side, "Have you never left Britain," she asked, "that you can't tell the difference between an accent from Australia and one from South Africa?" She laughed and shook her head.

"Oooh!" 

Isolte and Tristan whipped their heads around in unison. The dark haired Gryffindor that Professor Snape seemed to like to glare at jumped slightly. "You're from South Africa?" he asked.

Isolte nodded. "Yeah."

"Do you speak South African?" he asked.

"Don't be stupid Longbottom," Malfoy said, "they speak English in South Africa."

Ignoring Malfoy, Isolte smiled and nodded, "Yes," she said to Longbottom. "I speak a little Africaans."

Suddenly there was a loud hissing noise, followed by a burbling. Longbottom began backing away from his cauldron. Only, his cauldron wasn't there. Not entirely, anyway. The bottom was melting into the table, as if it were made of dark chocolate and had been placed on a warm car seat. A bubble appeared on the side of it, and as it popped it let out a hiss, and disintegrated the metal underneath it.

Professor Snape swooped down like a bat on the boy, "Mr. Longbottom," he said through clenched teeth, though his voice still had that calm, smooth tone to it. "It is the first day of class, and you have destroyed another cauldron? I had hoped you had learned some sense over the holiday, but obviously I was premature in such a hope. 50 points from Gryffindor for your ineptitude, and detention tonight for sullying my table." He then turned on the ball of his black-booted foot and strode away to peer at someone else's potion on the other side of the room.

Isolte's mouth hung open as she turned to her brother. "He got detention for messing up on his potion?" 

Tristan shrugged.

"That's not fair," she said.

Tristan lowered his head, looking at Isolte through his long, brown eyelashes. "He doesn't like Gryffindor."

"So?" Isolte demanded. "He's a teacher."

"Who gives detentions."

"For making a mistake?"

"Maybe he," Tristan threw a look at the quivering Gryffindor boy whose cauldron was now gone, "makes lots of mistakes."

"Then he needs help, not detention!" Isolte whispered, her voice harsh and her lips in a tight pinch.

"Maybe he's going to help him in detention," Tristan said nonplussed.

"Then it's tutoring, not detention." Isolte poked her brother, as if trying to get a reaction out of him. "That's not fair. Why would he do that?"

"Because he doesn't like Gryffindor," Tristan whispered.

"I don't like him," she said.

Draco looked up at that, glancing toward Professor Snape. If he heard her comment, he made no appearance of it. Draco stirred his potion, his eyes going back to the twins. They were sitting together, in the middle of the room, each on the other's side of the imaginary line that demarcated the Slytherin side from the side on which the Gryffindor sat. They blended two sides together, like a purple made from a bleeding red and blue. Since he'd been watching them the past three days, he'd noticed that they weren't so identical as he had thought. Tristan's face was a tad more square, his nose straighter than his sister's. Isolte's face came more to a point at her chin, and her nose rose upward at the end slightly, giving it a more rounded look. She rubbed her hands together and scrunched her shoulders, Tristan took his hands and rubbed her arms vigorously for a moment before returning his attention back to his cauldron. Draco noticed that neither of them used the thermometer to determine the temperature of their potions. Only he and Granger did that. Now they did it too. Isolte put her hand over Tristan's cauldron, and she nodded at him. He added an ingredient, and Draco pursed his lips together. _So he needs the thermometer; she does the temperature for him. _A quick feeling of heat waved through his body, _Charlaton_, he wanted to scream out. _Making yourself look better than everyone else._ Someone hit him in the arm.

"Your potion's going burn," Pansy said, casing a glance at the twins. "You need to be watching it, not him."

Draco didn't answer her, and turned his attention to his potion.

He hadn't really had any kind of conversation with Tristan since he'd arrived. They always sat at the Ravenclaw table to eat, and none of the teachers said anything. Are they just going to eat there the whole year? If the teachers said nothing to them, why shouldn't they? Draco had surmised that Tristan was not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, and if his sister's ability to detect the potion temperature was any indication, neither was she. Tristan didn't say much of anything to anybody, though he answered questions when asked, usually in such a way that it was difficult to come up with a follow up question. It was if his voice made it known that questions weren't welcomed, that conversation was not something he would engage in. Now, however, he had been throwing banter back with his twin, even bringing some expression to his face. He didn't smile, though, except that same painted on thing that didn't reach any part of his face save his lips. His sister, on the other hand, seemed to do a great deal of both smiling and talking. Even when conversing with her brother, she did most of the talking, accompanying it hand movements and vivid expressions that left no doubt as to what she was saying, even if the eavesdropper didn't hear her. As she placed her ingredients into her cauldron, she did it with a graceful flourish, her long fingers never seeming to stop and start, but rather giving a continued motion of scooping up ingredients, bringing her hand to the cauldron's mouth, and then dropping it in.

Professor Snape came by his desk and peered into his cauldron. He nodded, making eye contact with Draco, his black eyes giving him an approved look. He made his way around the room again, and when he got to the twins, he looked at each of their potions, and at each of them in turn. The girl looked up at him expectantly and the boy looked as if he could care less if the potion was a Knitting Potion or a cup of tea. Snape then nodded his head, making eye contact with only Tristan, before moving on.

__

Show offs! Draco fumed as he took his cauldron off of his fire to cool the potion.

He watched them ladle their potions into small phials, to be put aside to use at a later date. "He didn't even look at me," he heard Isolte complain.

"Perhaps he didn't like your potion," Tristan said slowly.

Isolte laughed, did the boy mean it as a joke? His voice had given no indication that it was. "I made your potion," she clicked her tongue at her brother.

"Then I guess you didn't pay enough attention to your own." Tristan, as if to prove his point the opposite, dipped his ladle in her cauldron and mixed a spoonful of her potion with his in a vial. Isolte giggled.

Draco ladled his own with less than his usual enthusiasm. He washed his equipment at the little sink in the back of the room. "Oh how cute," he heard Tristan's sister pipe when she came to it, before she gasped at putting her hands to the frigid water.

The bell rang and students rushed out toward the Great Hall for dinner. Draco walked slowly out of the room, aware that the twins were behind him.

"We pass it every day on our way to our breakfast," Tristan was saying. "So it was easy to find."

"Still bloody cold," Isolte muttered, her voice sounding farther away.

Draco glanced back to see Tristan and Isolte going the opposite way of the stream of students. _He couldn't be…_Draco blinked, and looked behind him. Crabbe and Goyle had already began walking again, eager for food. He looked back toward the twins as they turned down another corridor. _He is!_ He hurried after them, cutting down another corridor that he knew led to the Slytherin Common Room.

When he got there, he found that the twins had beat him to it. He felt his face go pink as Tristan said to Isolte, "The girl's dorms are that way, and ours are over there."

"I still think the green fire is cool. You've got to find out how they do that."

"You aren't allowed in here!" Draco's voice sounded unusually high to his own ears. Both twins turned to him. "You're supposed to be at supper!" He lowered his voice to a hiss and watched Tristan lead Isolte to the Boy's Hallway.

"So are you," Isolte shot back, disappearing through the door Draco stood still for a moment, not believing what he was seeing. A Gryffindor was in their Common Room. And Tristan had just led her toward the boys dorm. He blinked, and rushed to the door, flinging the heavy wooden thing open with a thud. Down the corridor he saw that the door to their dorm room was open.

"This one is mine," he heard Tristan say. "That's Greg's, Vincent's, Draco's and Blaise's."

Draco entered the room as Isolte repeated it, pointing to each bed in turn. "Our room has five people in it too!"

"What are you doing?" Draco's hands were in fists at his sides.

"He's showing me his bedroom," Isolte said.

"You can't bring her in the boy's dorm," Draco strode toward them, ignoring Isolte, his eyes on Tristan.

Tristan turned to face Draco, and tilted his head to the side, and blinked slowly. "She can't take me to her room," he said, "It's for _girls_."

Draco stopped walking and blinked. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he drawled.

"Obviously," Isolte said, letting Tristan lead her passed Draco and out of the room, "You've never been in a girl's dorm."

She liked the way the Common Room glowed with a green twinge because of the fire in the grate. The Gryffindor tower hadn't had a fire in it, but then, it wasn't as cold down there. _And by the time you get up there, you're blood is pumping so hot, you don't need to have a fire._ She chuckled to herself. Tristan looked back at her, and she smiled at him. _I'll be in better shape than he will at the end of the school year._

She could hear Draco following them as they silently made their way back into the Dungeon corridor. She wasn't about to tell him that, before three days ago, she'd never been in a girl's dorm either.


	4. Mad North by Northwest Chapter 4

--"I am but mad north by northwest--when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

--William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

Chapter 4

Isolte couldn't breath. She tried to intake air, but nothing would happen, hands grasped her throat, tightening their grip so that she could feel lack of blood flow through her jugulars. Her eyes bulged out of her head. She opened them to see a tanned, golden haired beauty of a man, bright blue eyes shining. His full lips were twisted in a sneer of rage, and his nostrils flared as he breathed in. Isolte could see the pores on his nose, when he spoke, each taste bud on his tongue was present in vivid relief, small yellow spires rooted on the dark pink of his tongue. Sparks began to flash at the corners of her vision, she tried to move her mouth, "Daddy," it moved, "daddy stop." But no sound came out, not even a garble or grunt. Her chest was about to burst, her head was about to erupt like a volcano, spewing brains and blood all over her bedroom walls. She raised her hands to her throat again in a desperate attempt to get him to unhand her.

With a gasp she pulled the sheet away from her neck and rolled out of her bed. For a moment she was covered in thick darkness, the smell of must and damp penetrating her oxygen starved brain. 

__

That's right, you're in Hogwarts.

As if the word Hogwarts was itself a charm, the cold of the room blasted at her body, sending her shivering and covering her skin with goosepimples. She struggled to get up, and batted the heavy, velvet curtains away from her, tripping over her sheet that still was wrapped gently around her neck. She threw it off as if it was burning her and took a deep breath, the damp air making it difficult to feel as if she was getting any oxygen. When her breathing returned to normal, she held her breath, suddenly aware that she shared the room with four other girls. She heard only their sleepy breathing, deep and rhythmic like an African drum beating over the savannah.

She wiggled her toes, her feet were beginning to go numb with the cold, and walked toward the Common Room. She didn't go to the fireplace to warm herself, but padded silently through the room, her feet making only the slightest of slaps as she walked. She swung open the portal and exited the Gryffindor Tower. She turned to The Fat Lady, to see her sleeping in the painting, her head lopped onto her shoulder, her brown curls bobbing slightly as she breathed. 

__

Breathe. Breathe deep if you have to, but breath, it was only a dream.

No, it wasn't a dream. She never felt anything in dreams, they were numb, tasteless, like lukewarm porridge. _It was a memory._ She closed her eyes and shoved the thought out of her mind. She put her hands to her neck, surprised at how cold they were, and felt her throat. _The sheet must have caught around my neck and began strangling me._

Her head was hurting, and she still had sparks at the edges of her vision. She turned down the hall and began descending the stairs, her soft slap-slap-slap of bare feet echoing slightly in the vastness of the open stairwell of the castle.

It was almost pitch dark, but the slit-like windows let in bits of moonlight. _Castles had slit windows,_ she heard her mother's voice saying, perhaps in the recount of a fairy tale, _so that arrows couldn't penetrate them_. Did the Founders have to worry about arrows here? Or were they just following convention and made some of the windows slits?

She reached the bottom of the stairs and began breathing heavily_. Breath, Dad isn't here. Mum isn't here. You're thousands of miles away, in a magic castle, safe_. Was that true? Was she safe? What was keeping her parents from marching right into Hogwarts and taking the three of them back to Africa? Nothing had been said to any of them after their arrival in England. It was if they had lived at the Stands Manor all of their lives. They had each been incorporated into the house and lives of the Stands household, and in the span of a week, they had gone to London to buy their school supplies, they had labeled all of their belongings, they had drunk litres of bitter tea, tried to be made sweet and docile with sugar and cream. They had not asked any questions, lest the fragile peace they experienced shatter. But underneath it all, underneath the excitement of boarding school, underneath the enticement of illicit magic not to be performed during the summer, underneath the kisses of Aunt Colleen and the hugs of Uncle Patrick lied a tension so thick Isolte could taste it. It was what made the tea bitter despite the sugar and cream. She was sure of it. What was preventing her Mum and Dad from retrieving their children? 

__

Because they don't want you. The thought burst forth from the back of her mind and bounced against her forehead with a force that made the sparks at the edge of Isolte's vision dance. _You're not even worth coming to get, now that you're gone._

She reached the hidden door to the Slytherin Common Room, or where she thought the hidden door should be. "Tempest," she whispered. The wall pushed forward slightly, and for a second she thought it might fall on her. But it slid to the side, and revealed the green glow of the fire. She stepped over the threshold and the door slid shut behind her. Her feet were numb now, and she walked so softly that she no longer slapped the floor. _Can't wake anyone up._ She had the urge to run, to fly down the hall and burst open the door to the boys dorm room. But she crept, her feet not making a sound, the opening of the door not making a sound, the closing of the door not making a sound. Two of the boys in the room were snoring, she couldn't tell which ones in the pitch darkness of the room. "Illuminare digitalis," she whispered. Slowly the tip joints of her fingers and toes began to glow, turning her nails red, as if she was holding them up to a torch. She walked to Tristan's bed, the illumination from her fingertips giving her enough light to see by. Parting the heavy emerald drapes, which were black on black in the unlit dungeon room, she peered at the thin, sleeping boy in the bed. It was her brother. She extinguished her finger and toe lights and climbed into the bed next to him. 

The sheets smelled of the dampness of the dungeon, and Tristan took up all of the twin bed. She pushed him gently, when he didn't move, she slid her feet under the blanket and put them on his legs.

He gasped, his eyes flying open, she could almost hear them in the darkness. "Your feet are frigging freezing," Tristan ground out, moving over in his bed to give her room to lie down.

She made herself comfortable, putting her head on the spare half of his pillow. She felt his breath as he exhaled, and the warmth of his body began seeping into her numb feet. 

Both of them lay on their sides, the twin bed barely big enough for two bodies to fit in. He wrapped his arms around her, and she heard his breathing become regular once again. "I had a nightmare," she said, before he could fall back asleep.

"What about?" he asked, his voice slurred.

"Back home," she whispered.

"Don't worry," he told her, "not there."

"I know," she answered. She heard him breathing deeply and steadily, and let him stay asleep. His smell was comforting. When she breathed in, it was like she was taking in a little bit of him each time, and it made her stronger, less hurt. She closed her eyes and listened to his breathing for a long while, before finally falling back asleep.

"I can't see it," said Neville, standing up and sighing. "They all look the same.

"You're facing the wrong direction, Neville," said Hermione, leaning over and moving his telescope to a different part of the sky. She looked in his spylens and then said, "Now try."

When Isolte opened her eyes again, she felt the room was warmer, and crawled out of the bed. Parting the curtains, she got a blast of colder air as she yawned. She left the boys dorm and exited the Slytherin Common Room. When she had reached the ground floor, she saw through the windows that the sun had risen. _Woke up just in time_, she yawned again.

She wasn't quite as cold when she got back to Gryffindor Tower. She got ready for the day, and sat in the Common Room until the bell on the large grandfather clock tolled seven am. Curfew was over.

She roamed around the 4th floor trying to find the library and stumbled upon it just as she had decided she was going to find the stairs and go down them. The double doors that led to the library were open, and she could see several bookshelves and tables. When she poked her head in, the only person she saw was a thin, shriveled faced woman who reminded Isolte of an underfed vulture. "Up early, aren't you?" she said.

Isolte hesitated before answering. Was she being sarcastic? "Yes, Madam..." her voice trailed off.

"Pince," the librarian answered for her. "Madam Pince." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "And what would you be doing here at this early hour?"

Isolte blinked, "I would like a book on Hilda the Insane."

Madam Pince gave her sidelong look, as if she didn't believe her. "Hilda the Insane?" she repeated, "why do you want a book on Hilda the Insane? She was insane." 

__

Of course she was insane. That's why she was called Hilda the Insane! "We were learning about her in class…I wanted to know more about her…"

"She will be under Hilda or Mushroom," Madam Pince said.

Isolte looked around the huge room, with rows and rows of bookshelves, so close together she doubted two students could walk abreast through them. "Hilda…?" she asked, she saw no letters on any of the bookshelves to indicate what went where.

Madam Pince stood up quickly, causing Isolte to take a step back. "This way," she said. She led Isolte down several isles of books, and passed a doorway barred with a rope entitled, "Restricted Section". She stopped and pulled a book out of the shelf. Isolte read the title _Hilda of Cymru: Insane or Ingenious?_ Madam Pince then turned on her heel and began walking the way they had come. "Name?" she asked, going behind her desk.

"Isolte Stands-Rike."

Madam Pince stamped the book with a giant stamp and then handed it to Isolte. "Due back September 17th."

"Thank you, Madam Pince," Isolte said. The book was thick with dust, Madam Pince had left finger imprints on the cover from it.

Madam Pince merely nodded and then began writing on a piece of parchment on her desk. 

As Isolte walked out, she passed Hermione on the way in. She smiled, but Hermione did not smile back. She simply walked in through the door and then smiled broadly at Madam Pince.

Looking down at the book in her hands, Isolte's chest lurched and took a deep breath. During her walk back down to the ground floor, the castle seemed to expand around her, stretching out in every direction for as far as she could see. There was no privacy, there was nowhere to run where she couldn't been seen, couldn't be caught. There was no where to be alone. She was transparent, each painting and student that she met in the halls could see through her exterior, could see that there was a black pit that gurgled out ugliness and filth. If Aunt Colleen and Uncle Patrick had known, they wouldn't have sent her to Hogwarts. They would have locked her up in their attic, sent Tristan and Galahad to school, and told them to forget that she had ever existed.

She entered the Great Hall, leaned against the wall and watched as students slowly filed in the Hall for breakfast. There were so many people, so many new faces, different faces, that she didn't know. She couldn't remember all of their names, she didn't want to remember all of their names. She wanted her little class back, just the twelve of them. Mrs. Tatti's classroom was small, it had at one time been a storage closet. The black woman smelled of hair relaxer and cocoa butter. She took the twelve magical students into her "Talented and Gifted" classroom with no fuss at all. At year six at school, she would send an invitation if the student was to be in her room, and their official magical education began. They all knew each other, they knew each other's names, they knew each other's brothers and sisters, they knew...

"When did you leave?" Tristan brought Isolte out of her wanderings. "I didn't even feel you get out of bed."

She wanted to wrap her arms around her twin, hold him to her and feel his arms around her, reassuring her that this place, this huge place, wouldn't consume her, wouldn't make her a speck so small that no one and nothing could see her. She stepped closer to him and laid her head on her his shoulder. "I had a nightmare," she said.

"Another one?" he put an arm around her, and leaned his head on hers.

"No," she said, "just the one."

He took a step back and looked at her hard. "Are you alright?" 

Tears welled up in her eyes, as if his asking her unleashed the loneliness she had been fighting back since the library.

"Did someone hurt you?" he asked, his voice monotonous despite the question. 

She laughed and sniffed. "No," she said, "I miss you."

"You saw me this morning," he took her arm and led her to the Ravenclaw table. "And you can see me any night you want." For a moment, she thought she saw his eyebrows lower in pain, as if he had hurt himself. "You know I'll always tell you the password." 

Isolte laughed again and hugged him with her free arm. Her satchel bumped up against his hip, and he pushed her away. 

"What are you reading?" he asked. She showed him the book. "Count on you to do extra research on a topic from history class."

"She sounds really cool."

"She sounds really crazy to me," Tristan said. Isolte scrunched up her face and took a deep breath to calm her fast beating heart. Tristan licked his lips and looked away from her. "Sorry," he muttered.

Jolie and Galahad came in the Great Hall then, and the four of them took seats on the bench. "You're here early," Jolie said to Isolte. "Hungry?"

She wasn't, but reached for a soft boiled egg all the same. "I went to the library," she said. "Needed something else to read."

When the deep THONG of the morning bell sounded, she reluctantly parted ways from her brothers and cousin in hall. She fought panic as it rose in her throat. The hallway of the school seemed to open up again and try to swallow her. She glanced down at the map and sprinted up the stairs to her Charms class.

Professor Flitwick, she found, was a small, very nice man. He smiled the entire class, telling them in a squeaky voice that they would be learning more advanced Charms this year, and that all of their hard work in the years past was about to pay off. He reminded Isolte of a drawing of a leprechaun she had seen in a book once, only he was wearing pale blue robes and pointed hat. _Perhaps he is a leprechaun, _she mused_, if one of your teachers is a ghost, then why can't one be a leprechaun?_

At the end of class, as they all filed out, she heard the very tall black boy that was in her year say, "So when are we going to learn all these cool new Charms? All he did today was talk."

His words seemed to knock the walls of the hallway back into place. In an instant, they were no longer gaping at her, trying to erase her existence. She was opaque again, the transparent feeling that the school had cast upon her this morning was gone. _We didn't do any charms today, that's good._ She smiled and sighed before she could stop herself.

She spent most of the day in the library, except when she knew Tristan was free. She met him for short periods several times in The Great Hall, and they had a cup of tea together in the late afternoon. It tasted as bad as all the others had.

"Take a nap before you go to Astronomy tonight," he advised her, "or it'll be a lot harder than it should be."

So after dinner she went to bed and slept. The other girls in the dorm room were already asleep, none of them had drawn the curtains to her bed. _Just a nap_, Isolte told herself, _they're just taking a nap_. She felt as if she were spying on them, seeing something she shouldn't in their still, resting forms. All of them had peaceful looks on their faces, and their bodies rose and fell with their easy breathing. Is that what she looked like when she slept? She slipped into her own bed, keeping the curtains open, and closed her eyes.

A moment later she was being shaken, "Get up Isolte," said a voice, "we're going to be late for class."

Isolte opened her eyes to find the room dark, lit only with a torch on the wall. Parvati was standing over her, her hand still on Isolte's shoulder. Isolte sat up and looked around. Hermione and Lavender were at the door to the room, books in their arms, school robes on, looking not fully awake.

"Come on," Hermoine said in a quick, bossy voice, "we can't be late on our first day." She didn't wait for Isolte to get out of bed, but strode out of the door, the other two girls following her. Isolte rolled out of bed, grabbed her satchel and followed them down the hallway, as they converged with the rest of the girls from their year.

__

They waited for me, she was surprised. They met the Gryffindor boys in the Common Room, and exited it through the portrait as a group. 

A tall witch was waiting for them on the other side of it. "Good evening," she said in a sing-song voice

"Good evening, Professor Sinistra," the group of Gryffindors sang back.

She began walking down the hallway, holding a lantern above her head to light the way. "I hope you all had a wonderful summer," she sang.

The professor got several replies, and she nodded, as if each one was a question whose answer was yes. "And we have a new addition," she looked back, her dark eyes searching the throng of children for a face she didn't recognize. Her eyes caught Isolte's and she smiled. "You must be Miss Stands-Rike," she said, "you're an only this year." 

__

What does that mean? Isolte wanted to ask.

"Last year there were two transfer students in your year," Sinistra said, looking at all the bobbing heads that followed her. "Isn't that right?"

"Yes, Professor Sinistra," the throng sang.

She led them up to a tower, with the pinnacle being a room filled with telescopes. They were all different colors and shapes and faced all different directions, as if a mad party of students had left them moments before each looking at a different part of the sky. The group of students flooded into the room, each of them scuttling to get to a telescope. Isolte found an unoccupied one, pink with pale blue stars painted on it, by the boy who had melted his cauldron in Potions. _Mr. Longbottom_, she heard Professor Snape's smooth voice in her head. She looked in the spyglass, and saw only blackness. She turned the telescope to face her, and took off the cap that someone had smugly pressed on the end. She felt a tap on her shoulder.

"Be careful," said the tall black boy, who stood at the telescope on her other side. "Neville can get vicious with that scope."

Isolte glanced back over at Neville and then back Dean and nodded. _Oh,_ came a proud voice from the base of her head, _you remembered his name!_

They followed Professor Sinistra's instructions, doing a short review of the end of the last year. Isolte was grateful for it, she'd never used a telescope in front of other people before. Back home, Astronomy had always been homework; the theory was taught at school, the practice was done at home. Isolte had never been very good at it, but from the looks of the people around her, neither was anyone else.

"It looks like the aurora will be heavy this winter," Sinistra sang, "so I want everyone to look at Jupiter in the western part of the sky. Once the cold comes, we won't be able to see it anymore."

__

What does the cold have to do with seeing Jupiter? Isolte wondered, turning her pink telescope to the western horizon.

"I can't see it," said Neville, standing up and sighing. "They all look the same.

__

No, no, no, no, Isolte's heart began to pound in her chest, each beat a resounding "no" in her head.

"You're facing the wrong direction, Neville," said Hermione. Isolte turned slowly toward Neville beside her, and saw Hermione leaning over and moving his telescope to a different part of the sky. She looked in his spylens and then said, "Now try."

Isolte tried to breath in, but no air would come into her mouth.

Neville looked into the spylens. "That one?" he said, "I remember Jupiter looking different than that." He stood up, and as he did so, caught sight of Isolte staring at him. His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. "Professor Sinistra!" he shrieked, pointing at Isolte.

The teacher was there in a heartbeat, she looked down at Neville, and then followed his outstretched arm with her eyes. They widened when they caught sight of the girl beside him. "Oh goodness," she swept down on Isolte, her dark hair swaying slightly at her movement. She grabbed Isolte's shoulders, "Miss Stands-Rike."

Isolte tried to answer her, but her chest wouldn't take in any air. Her heart pounded in her head, "No, no, no, no," and her mind chattered, _It's only been three days. Please God, it's only been three days, this can't be happening. _

"Breathe," Sinistra commanded. Isolte stared at her, her muddy green eyes wide and her pale cheeks turning blue. Sinistra shook her hard, causing her head to bounce forward, "Breathe!"

As if breaking a spell, Isolte's chest obeyed and took in a wheezy breath. She let it out, and the next one came regular. The pounding in her head slowly receded.

"Miss Stands-Rike," Professor Sinistra said, "are you alright?"

Isolte's mouth still hung open from her first breath, but she nodded. "I can't find Jupiter," she said. _Oh, what a lame excuse, you stupid girl!_

Sinistra eyebrows drew together as she looked at her, and then bent down and studied the eyepiece. "You're pointed right at it, dear," she said gently.

Isolte wracked her brain for a reply, but all that came was, _It's only been three days, this can't be happening. Not here, not now._

Sinistra's face softened and she moved her hands from Isolte's shoulders to her back and began to rub it. "It must be a very hard week for you," she said, "why don't you go back to the Gryffindor Tower. You probably know all this anyway."

Isolte nodded and picked up her satchel. She glanced at Neville, who looked relieved, his hand on his chest. Behind him, Hermione looked at her with raised eyebrows, and when she turned to go, she caught Dean whispering something the curly haired boy he always hung out with.

She went down the stairs of the Astronomy Tower, and kept going down, until she couldn't find any stairs anymore. Cold began to seep through her robes, and she followed the twists and turns of the corridors finally coming to the wall that hid the Slytherin Common Room. "Tempest," she whispered, and dragged her feet through the green-hued room to the boy's dorm. She dumped her satchel by Tristan's bed, and climbed into his bed without even taking off her shoes. 


	5. Mad North by Northwest Chapter 5

--"I am but mad north by northwest--when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

--William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

Chapter 5

Draco started awake at a loud thump. He looked about his bed, but saw only the dark upon dark that enveloped the dungeon after the torches were put out. He heard someone rustle the bedcovers _Crabbe must have woken me up, _he mused.

A gasp from one of the other beds made him sit up straight and grab his wand. "God, Solt," someone said, "You've still got your shoes on!"

Draco flung open the curtains to his bed, "_Lumos!" _ the tip of his wand began to glow a pale green. He saw Tristan's bed curtains rustling, yanked them open, and glared down at the bed.

Tristan was in his bedclothes, under the covers, covering his eyes with his hand. His sister, still in her school uniform and robe, was sitting on the opposite side of the bed, taking off her shoes. She turned around and looked at Draco. For a moment, he felt the blood drain from his face and he took a step back. In the pale light she reminded him a demon, her eyes seemed to glow green like an animal's in the torchlight. She mouth was twisted into sneer that infected her entire face and seeped down into her slumped shoulders. He could make out the white of her eyeteeth, as if she were growling at him like a dog. His heart missed a beat in his chest. He blinked, and shook his head slightly, and reclaimed his step. "You can't be in here," he hissed.

She didn't squint in the light of his wand, and the feral look on her face didn't fade. "Why not?" she asked. He could barely hear her, she spoke so softly. Her eyes bored in to him, so that he felt at any moment holes would erupt where she looked and begin spouting his lifeblood onto the dungeon floor. "Because it's the boys dorm?"

__

That's exactly why, you bitch, his mind said. "That's your brother's bed," he said.

"So?" she replied, "do you want me in yours instead?"

Draco shook his head again, the thought of that demonic face lying next to him making his shiver. "No," he growled, "you pervert."

"Ai, Malfoy," Blaise Zabini's voice came from his bed, "shut up, it's one o'clock in the bleeding morning."

"Tristan has his sister in his bed," Draco called behind him.

"So?" Blaise's face peeked out from his curtains. "You want her in yours?"

The comment knocked the wind out of Draco's sails for a moment. He stared at Blaise's head, seeming disembodied as the bed curtains hid the rest of him.

"Stop waving that in my face," Isolte swatted the tip of Draco's wand. He whipped around, felt the swish of his silky platinum hair against his neck and pointed his wand at her to cast a spell. Before he knew what had happened, Isolte stretched over her brother's prostrate form and physically knocked Draco's wand out of his hand. "I said stop waving that in my face."

Draco's wand flew through the air, above his own bed, to Crabbe's on the other side. "Eh!" he heard the boy say, probably from a sharp poke from the length of flying wood. "Whatcha throwing stuff at me for?" He opened his bed curtains, and saw Isolte half kneeling over Tristan, her eyes locked with Draco's.

Draco raised his hand, and Isolte smiled, a vicious thing that reminded Draco of the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland. "Go ahead," she whispered throatily. "I dare you."

He realized what he was doing, and lowered his open hand. "I don't hit girls," he said, "I'm not that kind of man."

Isolte snorted, "You're not a man at all," she turned, jumping off of the bed, and grabbing her satchel. She walked around to where Draco was standing and stood next to him She was a good few 7 cm taller than he. "Or haven't you looked in the mirror lately, little boy?"

Draco heard Blaise snigger at the opposite end of the room, but he kept his stormy gray eyes on Isolte, giving her his best 'if looks could kill you'd be a puddle of blood and bones on the floor right now' look.

"I came her to sleep," she broke eye contact with Draco, and looked about the room. "But its obvious I'm not going to get it here." She turned and walked out of the room.

The door closed gently, so that it almost blended in with Isolte's footsteps as she left. For a long moment, the only sound was Goyle's snoring.

Draco tore his gaze away from the door, and looked at Crabbe. He'd cralwed out of his bed, and was holding Draco's wand out to him. The light had gone out, of course, when Isolte had knocked it out of his hand. _Where's the light coming from?_ he wondered vaguely.

He turned to Tristan, so see he'd crawled out of his bed, his fingers and toes glowing with a pinkish light. He had no experssion on his face, except for maybe sleep. Draco wanted to bend over and throttle him, wrap his hands around the boy's neck and shake him until his brains fell out on the bedcovers. _Don't you know anything?! Don't you know she's a Gryffindor? Don't you know she doesn't come in here?_

Tristan matched his gaze and finally said, "She wasn't causing any harm."

Draco took a deep breath. He could feel his cheeks burning. _Keep cool,_ he told himself, _ you've already lost it once tonight. Don't do it again._ He felt a wave of shame wash over him. He wanted to go back into his bed, close the curtains, and pretend this hadn't happened. "Why did you let her in here?" he demanded.

"She wasn't causing any harm," Tristan said again. "You don't have to be afraid of her."

"I'm not afraid of her!" Draco said, too loudly for his own taste. Goyle snorted in his sleep. He and Tristan broke eye contact and glanced at the boy's bed. When the snoring began again, they turned back to each other. "She's not supposed to be in here."

"Yeah," Crabbe said, "she's a girl."

Blaise sniggered again from the back of the room. "Like girls haven't been in the room before." He looked highly amused.

"She's a Gryffindor," Draco spat out the last word like a curse. "What don't you understand?"

Tristan sighed and shifted his position, the shadows on he walls moving as he moved his glowing fingers and toes. "She's my sister," he said slowly, as if explaining to a small child. 

"You don't sleep with your sister," Draco felt his stomach lurch.

"Do you have a sister?" Tristan asked.

"No," Draco said.

"Do you have a twin?" Tristan asked.

"No," Draco said.

"Then how would you know?" Draco didn't answer. "Not everyone's mind is in the bog like yours," Tristan said, again very slowly.

"Stop being a pervert, Malfoy," Blaise said, "and go to bed."

Draco shot him a look, but he'd already closed his bed curtains. He turned back to Tristan, fingers still glowing and his face still impassive. "She's a Gryffindor," Draco hissed. "Slytherin and Gryffindor don't go together."

Tristan shrugged. "Then the Hat put her in the wrong house," he said. "She should have been in the same house as me." He muttered something, and the light emitting from his fingers and toes went out, leaving the room in darkness. 

Draco heard him close the curtains to his bed, and decided to drop the argument for now. He turned back to his own bed. "Draco?" he heard Crabbe call.

"Go back to sleep Crabbe," he snapped, crawling into bed. He put his wand under his pillow and laid back down. He wasn't sleepy at all now, his face still burned from his confrontation with the Gryffindor girl. She shouldn't be in the room, it wasn't because she was a girl. It was because she was a Gryffindor. The Gryffindor will cut off their noses to spite their faces, and then cut off yours to spite you. They spouted nobility and loyalty and goodness and light, but they were traitors--all of them. Look at Wormtail. Even though he'd never met him, he'd heard his father talking to Crabbe's about him. He'd been a Gryffindor. And he had betrayed his friends. His father had never betrayed his friends. _He_ had never betrayed his friends. He would betray someone he didn't care for in a heartbeat if it suited him. Of course he would. But a Gryffindor, they'd talk sweet honeyed goodness to you, and then spit bitters at you a moment later. They were deceitful. With the Slytherin, what you saw was what you got.

__

If that's so, then you should believe Stands-Rike.

__

But is he really a Slytherin? Maybe the Hat put him_ in the wrong House._

Malfoy remembered that first night of the term, and the smile Stands-Rike had flashed him. It had made his blood run cold. It reminded him of something...he still could place what. _No,_ he thought, _that wasn't a Gryffindor smile._

__

A Gryffindor smile? Didn't know there was such a thing.

Was there such a thing? It sounded silly, now that he thought about it, but it fit somehow. There was something creepy about that smile, something not-quite-right about it. 

__

Stop worrying about it, his eyelids started to become heavy. _Go to sleep._ He was in the habit of listening to himself, so he shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, it was time to get ready for the day. He headed toward the showers, which were already full, stripped, and turn on the tap. The hot water hit his face and ran down his body in little rivulets at first, until the rivulets became streams, and then streams engulfed him in warm water. Steam rose around him, and he was enveloped in a little fog. He turned around, letting the water hit his back. The sounds of the other boys in the shower room broke through the fog of his shower as he reached for his bar of soap and began to lather his chest. 

__

Little boy, the sound of Isolte's voice rang in his head unexpectedly. He felt his blood rising, and was glad that heat from the water would camouflage any redness that was made by anger. _LIttle boy indeed._

But you are a little boy.

He knew that, he just didn't like to be reminded of it.

He ran his hands over his soapy chest, thin and scrawny, hairless and white. His stomach was flat, with his hand he could feel the muscles beneath, but the transulent skin hid them from view. He had no washboard, like some of the other boys. His thighs were thin and like his stomach, muscled underneath, but hidden from view. _Fine Seeker legs,_ he told himself, lathering up his calves, the curly hair catching slightly on the bar of soap. His hand went in between his legs, washing his "unmentionables." It had the expected result, as it did with every boy in the shower room. Except for the little ones, maybe. 

He glanced around quickly, there were a few First and Second Years in the room, their own bodies misty through the steam. But one could see they were just boys. Their balls, like their voices, hadn't dropped yet, and they hadn't developed the undeniable urge to greet themselves with a hardy handshake every morning in the shower.

__

A little boy indeed. He wasn't a boy. He was as well hung as anyone, better hung than quite a few, if he did say so himself. His pubic hair, a thin patch golden curls was a damn sight better looking than hairy, gorilla looking things of some people he could mention. He wasn't a boy. But he was little.

He glanced over at Stands-Rike as he dried off. Tristan wasn't little. He was the same height as his sister and while thin, unlike Draco his skin allowed his muscles to peek through. His arms were etched with lines of one who is used to picking up heavy loads, his stomach was carved with a canyon down the middle and disappeared at the brown curls in between his thighs.

He had been so startled to find Isolte in the room last night. It didn't seem right, that a brother and sister should sleep in the same bed. Blaise hadn't seen anything wrong with it, and he doubted Crabbe would see something wrong if it came up and bit him the arse. He would have to ask his mother about it, she had siblings. 

That morning Tristan sat with his sister, as always. Draco watched them from the Slytherin table, Isolte's voice still in his head, _Little boy..._ It was like a curse.

It was like she had seen through him, looked into his eyes in the green light of his wand, and seen _something._ He felt the urge to smack her, his palm ached to feel the slap of skin underneath it. He almost felt the sting of contact, saw tears in her eyes and her mouth pucker from the pain. The red spot on her cheek...

__

You'll get your chance, he consoled himself, _she might be taller than you, but size isn't everything. She'll get what's coming to her._

He took a sip of his tea. He was annoyed with himself, he hadn't figured out what would be coming to her yet.

Isolte wasn't paying the least bit attention to the Slytherin table as she ate breakfast. She choked down a cup of tea, she'd put too much sugar in it, and now it felt like the syrup she used to help her mother make for the natives. She glanced behind her to the Gryffindor table, but none of them paid her any attention. She blushed, and turned back to her tea.

"Where were you last night?" Parvati had asked her when they had all gotten up in the morning. "Your bed was empty when we came back from class."

Isolte felt the blood drain from her face. How did they know she wasn't there?

__

You left the curtains open, you idiot!

Parvati, Lavendar and Hermione stood in their nightgowns, staring at her. Her breath caught in her throat. What was she going to tell them?

__

Anything, tell them anything!

"I got lost," she said. _Oh, how lame, Isolte, how lame!_

Parvati nodded and Lavendar shook her head. Hermione sucked her teeth loudly and sighed, "Next time you need to wait for us so you know where you're going." All three of them had turned away from her, and nothing else was said.

It had taken her several seconds to gather herself. But she finally took a breath in, and then got ready for the day.

Tristan had met her at the door, not mentioning the night before. He had sat down, eaten his breakfast, and asked her if she slept well. 

"No," she croaked.

"No need to take it out on me," he muttered.

That morning she had Transfiguration. Any thoughts she may have entertained of Professor McGonagall being the Gryffindor equivalent of Professor Snape fled within the first five minutes of class. She was strict, almost to the point of being mean. She took five points away each from Parvati and Lavendar for talking, and tapped Neville on the head in frustration with the butt end of her wand when, after his sixth time, he couldn't transfigure the tea cup in front of him into a toad. However, his own toad leapt out of the tea cup later in the class, causing Professor McGonagall to clutch her chest and gasp with surprise. "You're going to be the death of me, Longbottom," she said in her thick, Scottish brogue. Neville hadn't seemed particularly worried about McGonagall's imminent death.

Lunch had passed quickly, and Isolte had followed all the other Fourth Years to their Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. She had not been immune to the buzz of excitement that flew through the Gryffindor Common Room at Professor Moody's class. In fact, everyone was queued up in front of the room. Hermione came running up right before the bell rang, her arms full of books.

The professor clanked into the room, surveyed it's occupants, and then proceeded ask the students which curses were most heavily punished by wizarding law.

Several hands rose tentatively into the air. Moody pointed at Ron, though his magical eye was fixed on Lavender, whom he had just corrected for talking to Parvati.

Isolte had never thought about that question before. She had simply figured that one didn't use curses on people, it wasn't a good thing to do.

__

That hasn't kept you from doing it, has it? The voice was her mother's.

Isolte focused on Ron's answer. "Er," he said, "my dad told me about one...Is it called the Imperius Curse or something?"

"Ah yes," said Moody appreciatively. Isolte had never heard of the Imperius Curse, perhaps it was called something different in South Africa.

Moody took a spider out of a glass jar. He pointed his wand at it as it skittered across his hand and said, "_Imperio!"_

The spider leapt from Moody's hand on a fine thread of silk and began to swing backward and forward as though on a trapeze. It stretched out its legs rigidly, then did a back flip, breaking the thread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles. Moody jerked his wand, and the spider rose onto two of its hind legs and went into what was unmistakably a tap dance.

Everyone was laughing--everyone except Moody.

"Think it's funny do you?" he growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it you?"

The laughed died away almost instantly.

"Total control," said Moody quietly as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over. "The Imperius Curse can be fought," he said, "an I'll be teaching you how. But it takes real strength of character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he barked.

Isolte jumped so high at the sudden change in the volume of the old man's voice that her thighs hit the bottom of her desk.

"Any one else know one?" he asked. He called on Neville, "yes?"

"There's one--" said Neville in a small voice, "the Cruciatus Curse."

Isolte felt her breath catch in her throat again. She folded her arms around herself, and kept her eyes on Neville, refusing to turn back to Professor Moody to watch spell performed. "_Crucio!" _she heard the professor's voice mutter, barely above a whisper.

The color drained out of Neville's face. Everything around him faded from Isolte's vision, so that he was all she saw. She knew something was going on just outside her vision, she knew something terrible, but she couldn't bring herself to move her head. She saw Neville's hands go white, trying to grip finger holds in the wood of his desk. She saw his brown eyes go wide, and his mouth drop open slightly. She saw horror spread over his face like a blush. She tried to open her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

She wrenched her eyes away from Neville toward the teacher's desk. She saw the spider, writhing it's swelled limbs in the air, but superimposed on it was the face of a boy. The brown of the wooden teacher desk became the golden savannah, and the smooth black of the spider's body became the smooth black skin of Zuani.

Zuani was tall and handsome, the crush of every girl in school. He was in her dance class after school. Even Isolte had fallen for him. His smile was perfectly straight, and it framed bright white teeth. His skin was like dark chocolate, ready to be licked up in the African sun. His limbs were long and graceful. He was often her dancing partner in ballet. He understood about magic. Even though he had none, his grandmother was a powerful witch. She was a native, she had learned "the old ways," but Zuani knew about it. 

And Isolte had dropped her guard. She had been nice to him, gave him her condolences on his grandmother's death.

"How did you know my grandmother dead?" he asked. "I haven't told anyone."

"I saw it," she told him.

"What do you mean?" his voice had an edge to it, his accent was a little too thick.

"In the well at the edge of the village," she said. 

As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn't. Zuani took a step back, one of his long, graceful legs, almost a jump. Isolte felt her face contort to a wince, and she took a step forward, holding her hands out to him. He wasn't her friend. He was her rival, it was a game with them, who would get the better parts in a ballet, who would get the dance teacher's praise. She had thrown back the curtain of her dislike for him, thought of his handsome features twisted in sadness, and given him her condolences.

"Josie!" he hissed at her. "Devil! You cursed her, didn't you? She was fine, before she got the breathing sickness."

Isolte wasn't sure she heard him correctly. "She'd been sick for a long time, Zuani, she--"

"Josie!" he screamed.

"I'm not a devil," Isolte heard her voice crack.

"You cursed her. You used the well to bring her the breathing sickness."

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Here was a well educated, modern boy. He had been to a good school, he was intelligent, he was surrounded by modern people. And he was speaking like a superstitious native. How could he say that? She had known him all of her life. His grandmother had taught her spells. His grandmother had taught her potions. He had seen her at his grandmother's knee as the old woman wove the fine grasses into baskets talking about pneumonia. How could he say that?

"I did no such thing!" Isolte screeched back at him.

"You cursed her!" Zuani shrieked.

"I did not," Isolte shouted, "you want a curse?" She had whipped out her wand and pointed it at him, right there in the back of the school yard, with the few students who were left after dance practice watching. "_Crucio!"_ she screeched.

Zuani and dropped to the ground and screamed. His body writhed, and spittle flecked from his mouth.

"Stop it!" someone had yelled.

"Stop it!" it was Hermione. 

Isolte gasped, and turned to face her, but she wasn't looking at her. She was looking at Neville. He was still white faced and terror stricken.

"Pain," said Moody softly, "you don't need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse."

Isolte turned back to Moody, and watched numbly as he took the last spider out of the jar and extinguished its life with the Killing Curse. It was as if she were watching a movie, as if she weren't really there in the room with the teacher and spiders. She had never heard of Avada Kedavra before, and she was glad of it.

She took out a quill and paper with the rest of the class and took notes on the Unforgivable Curses. She kept drifting to Zuani, the look on his face when she had lifted her wand, the spit all over his chin, the look of horror on the students' faces around her, the fear in her heart that her life was now over, she had done something that could never be forgiven. Moody himself said it was an automatic life sentence in Azkaban.

But nothing had happened to her. No one mentioned it ever again. Zuani walked on eggshells around her during dance class, smiling his brilliant smile. It was as if it never happened.

She walked out of the room still swimming in her own thoughts, the drone of the students voices was just background noise. It opened the halls up again, and again the school saw everything, saw the unforgivable, saw that she had nothing to redeem herself with, not even here, half the world away.

She bumped into a Ravenclaw as she sat down for dinner. The older girl scowled at her. "What's the matter with you? Watch where you're going."

"Sorry," Isolte muttered.

"Why don't you sit at your own table?" she asked.

"Leave her alone, Sara," Isolte heard Phillip's voice from behind her, "she can sit where she wants."

Isolte felt the Great Hall open up even wider, the enchanted ceiling became the outside, there was no distinction between them. The wall sucked at her, stretched her out like silly putty, making all of her imperfections elongated.

"Go sit your arse down at the Gryffindor table where it belongs," Sara said.

What did it matter? The school could see everything anyway. This place, that was supposed to be a haven, that was supposed to save her, it was the same as everywhere else. Why bother?

"Why don't you sit your ass down and shut up before I stuff your wand so far up your nose, it'll be sticking out your ears?" The venom in Isolte's voice hit home, Sara blinked in surprise and took a step back.

She recovered quickly, however. "Ass?" she said, "can't you even speak proper English?"

__

You have nothing to hide, she heard her own voice in her head, _this place already knows..._

Isolte took a step forward, traversing the space between she and Sara in one long, graceful stride. She drew her hand back, made a fist, and brought it to bare on Sara's cheek just as the ball of her foot hit the floor. _Like a dance step,_ a voice in the back of her said, _keep in time, one two three, one two three_.

Sara went sprawling backwards, ramming into several Hufflepuffs as they sat unawares on the bench to their table. Isolte followed, taking out her wand, and throwing her hand back. "Expell--"

"Miss Stands-Rike!" Someone caught hold of her wrist before she finished the spell and breathed out her name in undisguised shock. She turned to see Professor McGonagall, her dark hair piled on her head, her tartan witch's hat askew. "What in the world are you doing?"

Isolte looked into her eyes, and said nothing.

"Drop the wand, Miss Stands-Rike," Professor McGonagall said.

Isolte didn't move.

Professor McGonagall's lips pinched into a thin line, and the pressure on Isolte's wrist got tighter. _She's stronger than she looks,_ Isolte noted, still staring into the teacher's eyes.

"Put it down," she said again, her hand tightening more on Isolte's wrist.

Isolte knew she couldn't hold the wand in her hand much longer, the pressure of Professor McGonagall's fingers were beginning to hurt her. 

"Put the wand down, Isolte." She heard Professor Dumbledore's voice from her left. It was soft, and not at all angry, and she thought for a moment she had imagined it. She turned from McGonagall to stare into the Headmaster's bright blue eyes. They were framed with white eyelashes, and they sparkled like light off of the Caribbean water. "There isn't any need for that, Isolte," he said softly, "everything is quite all right."

Isolte let her fingers uncurl around her wand. She heard it clatter on the floor and felt her wrist being jerked. "You come with me, young lady," Professor McGonagall's voice was strained. She walked quickly to the door of the Great Hall, dragging Isolte behind her. 


	6. Mad North by Northwest Chapter 6

--"I am but mad north by northwest--when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

--William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

Chapter 6

It had been a long time since Professor McGonagall had seen that kind of look in a child's eyes. It was the look of a demon, one that made the eyes appear red and glowing, no matter what color they supposed to be. It made the whole face look like some caricature of a human being, something out of a nightmare. And it was no different with Isolte Stands-Rike.

McGonagall had thought nothing of grabbing the girl's hand. She had been waiting for a fight to break out. It was only natural, with the two of them sitting at the Ravenclaw table. She was surprised it was a Ravenclaw that started it, though. She had expected a Slytherin to come over and start harassing the boy for not sitting at his own table. But when Miss Stands-Rike had punched Miss Smithely, McGonagall's breath had caught in her chest. When the girl had raised her wand in the air, her first reaction was to pull out her own wand. Reason got the better of her, and she'd grabbed the girl's wrist instead.

But then, Miss Stands-Rike had turned around and looked at her. She had almost lost it--almost let go of the girl's wrist, almost stepped back in surprise. Her eyes were devoid of--what? There was nothing in them save that demonic glow that could not be called apathy, because there was _something_ there. But what it was, was indescribable. McGonagall couldn't have called it rage. She had seen rage in a child's eyes before. She seen children rage at each other, at teachers, at her. But she'd never seen this in a child before. It touched something in the back of her mind, spectral fingers of thought tried to grasp the word for the emotion she saw. But it slipped through like water through the rocks. A hot wave of frustration started at her chest and exploded though her reaching her fingertips before they loosened their grip on her wrist. 

Relief hadn't swept through her until she'd managed to get Miss Stands-Rike into her office. She had flung Miss Stands-Rike's arm, catapulting the girl in front of her. She turned around to shut the door and she saw the Headmaster had followed them, Miss Stands-Rike's wand in his hand.

"I do not know what they allowed you to get away with at your other school," McGonagall fumed, turning around to the girl again, "but such behavior is completely unacceptable here!"

The girl simply stared at her, that same demonized hatred in her eyes. _No, hatred isn't right._

"Why don't you have a seat, Isolte," Dumbledore said.

Miss Stands-Rike rested her glare on him. She then took a step backward and sat down in the chair in front of McGonagall's desk. The Transfiguration teacher tightened her lips into a thin, straight line and opened her mouth to speak. She blinked in surprise when she heard Dumbledore's voice come out it.

"I am sure that Isolte understands that what she has done is unacceptable, is that not so?" Dumbledore was speaking, and he turned his bright blue eyes onto the student in the chair. She made no move that she heard him other than her hard stare. "How do you propose you make up for it, Isolte?"

The girl didn't answer.

"You can apologize to Miss Smithely," Professor McGonagall answered for her, "and then you can help to clean the tables that you found so irresistible to sully."

Miss Stand-Rike's look didn't change. In fact, the look that had been brewing in her eyes became a concentrated beam directed at McGonagall in full force. Again, McGonagall tried to identify the look, but it was hidden from her, as if she'd forceably stuffed into the receses of her mind so that she couldn't grasp it. The room was silent. All McGonagall could hear was the three of them breathing. 

"I am not sorry," the girl said loudly, raising her chin toward McGonagall.

"I beg your pardon?" McGonagall said before she could stop herself.

"I am not sorry," she said again, "I will not apologize."

"Miss Stands-Rike--"

Dumbledore interrupted her for the second time that night, "Very well," he said. "Then you can simply help to clean the tables. The house elves will appreciate that chore being taken off of their hands for the evening I am sure." He shut the door gently behind him, and walked over the length of the room to stand beside McGonagall. "Dobby," he called softly. A moment later the house elf appeared. "Would you tell Mr. Filch to come and fetch Miss Stands-Rike for her detention this evening?" The little elf nodded his head, his ears flopping. "After he's finished his tea, of course. And speaking of tea," he continued, "could you have some brought up for us. I don't believe Miss Stands-Rike has eaten yet." 

A moment later, much too quickly McGonagall thought, another house elf appeared with three tea trays floating in the air. Dumbledore took one, McGonagall followed suit, and the third floated onto Miss Stands-Rike's lap. The house elf, wearing a tea towel that had a little fringe on the end looking somewhat like a flapper's dress, gave the girl a sympathetic look before saying, "Is there anything else that you bees needing?"

"No thank you, Tutu," said the Headmaster, "but you can tell everyone that they'll not be cleaning the Great Hall tonight."

Tutu blinked, and then stared with her large, bulbous eyes at the student in the chair, "B--b--but, but Tutu hasn't done anything wrong, sir!" Her squeaked so high McGonagall had to squint. "Why can't wes be cleaning the Hall tonight, why?"

Dumbledore looked down at her, smiling. "Miss Stands-Rike is being punished for dirtying the tables," he explained softly, "so she is to clean the Hall tonight."

"But Tutu hasn't done anything wrong, sir!" the elf wailed.

"No, you haven't, Tutu," Dumbledore bent down, eyes still on her, "but Miss Stands-Rike has. She won't get the same pleasure out of cleaning the Hall that you do." 

"The whole Hall?" Tutu's voice was as small as she was, "Tutu can't clean any of the Hall?"

Dumbledore chuckled. He turned his gaze to McGonagall and said, "Isolte will be cleaning just the tables?"

McGonagall caught the question, her anger abating slightly. _At least I'm not totally out of the loop,_ she told herself, nodding to the Headmaster.

Dumbledore turned back to Tutu, and nodded, "Just the tables then." The house elf nodded back, noticeably happier and disappeared.

Dumbledore took one of the little sandwiches from the tray that floated in front of him and began eating. His eyes rested thoughtfully on Miss Stands-Rike, who was plugging her sandwiches into her mouth as if she expected them to disappear from her plate at any moment. She never once looked up at either of them. 

To be honest, McGonagall would not have expected this type of behavior from Miss Stands-Rike. She thought, during Transfigurations earlier in the day, that Dumbledore had been wrong, there was no way she could be violent. She paid attention during class, nodding when appropriate, taking notes when appropriate. She had a habit of looking about her at the other children, but that was normal, it was her first week after all. She had managed to turn her cup into a frog on her third try. Not great, but not bad. Her brother had done it on his first, so she was expecting similar results from her. But getting it on the third try wasn't bad at all.

But the child that she had brought up to her office was not the same one she had taught in her Transfiguration class. This girl was disobedient, sullen, and refused to look at either them, she simply stared at her empty plate, and occasionally took sips of her tea. McGonagall couldn't catch her eye, couldn't see if that same look was there. What was it? She knew, she knew that she knew, and that frustrated her. _It's not the girl's fault you cannot identify an emotion you claim to see in here eyes._ But that didn't make her feel any better.

A knock brought McGonagall's attention to the door. It opened, revealing Filch, at his feet Mrs. Norris. He smiled, looking at Miss Stands-Rike like a piece of meat he was about to put into the oven. "Washing the tables, eh?" he said.

Miss Stands-Rike looked up and blinked. The look was gone from her face now, there was no light in her green eyes, from either a demonic hell that shone through them or from the wonder of excitement that had been there earlier in the day. Her rosy cheeks had gone several shades paler. "Yes sir," she said, standing up and reaching out a hand to Dumbledore. McGonagall wanted to bat her arm away, how dare she suppliant him now, after her blatant defiance only a few moments earlier.

"You won't be needing that," Filch said, his head moving in the direction of Dumbledore's hand. "You'll be doing your work with good old fashioned elbow grease."

Dumbledore still held her wand in his hands.

Miss Stands-Rike's shoulders slumped and she turned toward Mr. Filch. He led her out of the room, "Good evening Headmaster," he said with a nod, "Professor McGonagall." 

"Good evening Mr. Filch," he replied, "good evening Isolte."

The girl turned around, her eyebrows came together slightly, as if she were thinking hard about something. She didn't look at McGonagall, only Dumbledore, before turning from them and grabbing the door knob. The door shut softly behind them.

McGonagall turned to Dumbledore, "Albus--"

He held up his hand, "She's paying for her crime, Minerva," he said. "And her crime is a relatively small one."

"She was going to cast a spell on Miss Smithely," she said.

"Sara didn't have her wand out," Dumbledore took a sip of his tea. "I imagine Isolte was going to send her across the rest of the room."

McGonagall sighed. "When I had her in class today, I was sure you were wrong."

Dumbledore raised his white eyebrows. "Wrong about what?"

"Her being violent," McGonagall said, "she was so well behaved."

"She has apparently been well behaved in her other classes too," Dumbledore said. 

"It was if she were some other child, the look in her eyes," McGonagall shook her head. "There was nothing left of the girl in class there." The look had pushed Miss Stands-Rike out of her body, replacing her with something else. Just like…McGonagall let out a gasp. She saw in her mind's eye, Dumbledore, twenty years earlier, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. He looked up at her, "I had so hoped," he said, "that we had made some impact on Tom Riddle. I had so hoped…" The look in his eyes was the same as the one she had seen in Miss Stands-Rike's. "Despair," she said. "There was nothing but despair."

"But not when you taught her in class today," Dumbledore pointed out.

McGonagall shook her head. "What does a fourteen year old know that she could despair?" she asked. "She hasn't lived long enough to know how to despair." McGonagall had lived through two World Wars, fought in the one of them, and fought in the war against Voldemort that none of the Muggles knew of. She knew what it was to despair. A fourteen year old girl couldn't possibly know anything about despair. 

Dumbledore took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He swirled his tea around in his cup, as if examining the brown liquid for his thoughts. "I think she is just getting used to us," he said. "It is very different here from what she is used to, after all."

"But Albus," she said, "shouldn't she eat at her own table then? How is she going to get used to us if she's not sitting with her housemates?"

He looked up from his tea and regarded her. "Isolte, Tristan and Galahad appear to be very close." He paused, looking into her eyes in that way that made it seem as if he were looking into one's soul. "But they need to know their housemates." He nodded, more to himself it seemed than to McGonagall. "They can eat dinner at the Ravenclaw table," he said, "but breakfast and lunch must be at their own tables." He put his teacup down on the floating tray, which then disappeared. "I will tell Severus to tell Tristan." He held up Miss Stands-Rike's wand and said, "This wood is Baobab." He lifted it up and down as if weighing it in his hand. "It has been a long time since I've seen a Baobab wand. Made by Belawi Teniu, no doubt. I wonder what's in it."

"Should something else not be done, Albus?" McGonagall called after him.

He turned. "About what?"

McGonagall sighed. "Miss Stands-Rike."

"Oh!" he chuckled, and tucked her wand up his sleeve. "No, I don't believe so. What she did wasn't that bad." He turned back to ward the door. "After all, Minerva, you didn't even take any points from her."

McGonagall opened her mouth to protest, but then realized that she hadn't. 

* * * 

Mr. Filch was a sadist. Isolte couldn't think of any better word to describe the man as she turned the cloth in large circles over the table. Not only did he not allow her to use magic while she was cleaning, he didn't use any either! He had polished a few of the candlesticks and then sat down and watched her polish.

__

You were scrubbing when he sat down, not polishing. 

She clicked her tongue, and glanced over at Mr. Filch. He didn't seem to hear her. His large, lamplike eyes stared at her like she was a slice of chocolate cake covered with icing, ready to be devoured. When he caught her looking at him, he would scrunch is eyes up, so that the lamp lights were slightly shuttered, and say something unpleasant to her.

"Not so high and might now, are we?"

"Is our arm getting tired yet, girlie?"

"The tables won't clean themselves, will they now?"

It bothered her how he spoke to her in the plural, as if he were trying to include himself into her detention somehow. But he was in charge of the detention, why would he want to include himself in it?

The house elves had cleaned the rest of the Great Hall with magic, it took them only a few moments. It was fasinating to watch them move things around without a wand or a word. And then, everything was clean except for the tables. So she picked up the scrubbing brush from the bucket of warm, soapy suds, and began washing the tabletops. One of the elves came over to her, she recognized him as Dobby from tea time, and patted her on the back. He gave her that same sympathetic look that Tutu had done, and then he'd vanished.

Isolte had almost cried. Almost. Stupid Sara Smithely wasn't worth crying over. And who named their child Sara Smithely? It sounded like something out of a nursery rhyme:

__

Sara Smithely was a Hufflepuff. Sara Smithely was knocked on her duff.

She chuckled at her cuteness. Apparently, chuckling wasn't allowed, though, because Mr. Filch was on her like a leech on a fat man's belly. "So, washing the tables is funny, is it?" he said. He grabbed her arm, and jerked her down on her knees, almost making her chin hit the bench. "Let's see you laugh when you're cleaning this," and he put his hand on the top of her head. 

He's going to ram my head into the floor, she thought. She put both of her palms flat on the floor, dropping her scrub brush. It hit her knee, and she was faintly aware that hurt. She could hear her heart beating in her ears, and she took in a deep breath. She was suddenly very aware of Mr. Filch's scent, a polishy smell, mingled with soap and dust. He put pressure on her head, and she braced for her nose to make contact-- but he stopped short of the stone floor and pointed to the underside of the bench.

It was covered with different colored lumps, like cancer growing out of the bottom of the benches. She blinked, and realized it was gum.

Isolte groaned.

Mr. Filch chuckled and handed her a scraper.

That was when she knew he was a sadist.

She'd managed to scrape off all of the gum from the bottom of the four long benches. Her shoulders hurt from having to lay on her back to get underneath them. After that, Filch had handed her a polishing cloth, "Have to finish the jobs we start, now don't we?" he asked.

__

You haven't started any damn jobs, she wanted to snap. But she didn't, she simply took the cloth from him, dipped into the can of polish, and began polishing.

She was on the last table, Gryffindor, when the Headmaster walked in. "Still at work, I see," he said as if he was walking into a party.

"She thought cleaning was funny at first," Filch said. "But now we're not laughing, are we?"

Professor Dumbledore walked over to the Gryffindor table and sat down on the bench near her. "Is that so?" he asked.

Isolte stopped her polishing and looked at him. He was smiling! She blinked a few times to make sure she wasn't seeing things. He was still smiling, his old, wrinkled face was lit up with a smile partly hidden underneath his beard and crooked nose.

"No sir," she said, "I wasn't laughing at the cleaning." She glanced at Filch. He glowered at her. "I was laughing because I made up a rhyme."

Isolte winced as soon as the words came out of her mouth.

__

That's the dumbest things I've ever heard, "because I made up a rhyme." 

"Making up rhymes about me?!" Filch was over at the Gryffindor table with a speed that Isolte found surprising for a man his age.

"No!" she cried, trying to take a step back. She was inbetween the bench and the table, and ended up loosing her balance, falling with a thump onto her bottom. "It wasn't about you."

"Who was it about then?" he leaned over, and the smell of polish and soap and dust assulted her nose again.

"About Sara Smithely."

"Sara Smithely?" Dumbledore said. He put his hand on Filch's arm, and the caretaker stood back up, looking down at Isolte disapprovingly.

"Being a Hufflepuff," Isolte said quietly.

"Hmmm," Dumbledore stroked his beard. "Sara Smithely was a Hufflepuff..." He looked about the room, as if looking for something. "Isolte gave her a good, hard cuff." He turned to Isolte and beamed a proud smile, reminding Isolte of Galahad when he got a math problem correct.

She could feel her cheeks getting red, heat flooded her face and ears, and she smiled despite herself. "Sara Smithely fell on her duff."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Was knocked on her duff is more like it." He winked at her.

Isolte's mouth dropped open. Could he read minds? Could he really see into you with those bright, blue eyes.

He held out her wand to her. "You'll be needing this for your lessons tomorrow, I believe."

She took it from him gingerly. "Thank you."

"You're most welcome," he said. "Starting tomorrow, you shall have only dinner at the Ravenclaw table. You'll have breakfast and lunch with Gryffindor." The way he said it gave Isolte no room to argue. "And now it's midnight, time for you to go to bed." He put his hand on her back and rubbed it gently as he stood up. "Mr. Filch will take you back up to Gryffindor Tower.

Isolte swung her legs over the bench and stood up. "I can walk up on my own," she said, "I know the way."

Professor Dumbledore smiled at her as if he didn't hear her. "And Isolte," he said, "there will be no more detentions, will there?"

Isolte watched him, looked into his sapphire eyes that could see through her, into her, past her. "No sir," she said.

He nodded, and his glasses fell forward on his nose. He pushed them back up and smiled at her. "Good."


End file.
